|
 |
|
GOT IT?
St. Louis IT Coalition a Hotbed for
New Ideas
|
By Bill Beggs Jr.
It” is that certain special something that a successful actor,
athlete or entrepreneur possesses, an edge, a key to success
that defies description—which is why “it” is well, “it.”
That’s why it—“IT,” that is—is a perfect acronym for Information
Technology. If you could hold it in your hand, it wouldn’t be
IT.
Thankfully, for the many of us who just wouldn’t be able to
get a handle on it, men and women who are smarter than the average
bear have been getting their arms around it.
IT, that is.
And if IT Coalition staff head Willem Bakker and his colleagues
at St. Louis Coalition for Information Technology have anything
to do about it, St. Louis will continue to develop into an epicenter
for IT, unlike those on either coast or elsewhere in this knowledge-driven
21st-century world of ours.
When he came aboard as executive director of the Coalition last
year, Bakker immediately tapped into the deep well of volunteer
talent which had been marshaled for this new civic venture.
For starters, he worked shoulder to shoulder with the likes
of Donn Rubin, executive director of the seven-year-old Coalition
for Plant and Life Sciences, established by the RCGA and Civic
Progress to advance the region’s BioBelt agenda.
“Can’t” is not a word in Bakker’s vocabulary; it’s a word also
foreign to Mark Showers and Steve Hassell, chief information
officers (CIOs) for Monsanto and Emerson, respectively, and
founding members of the Coalition’s advisory board. As the global
economy has shifted largely from industry to information, these
are the types of people who’ve had to stay at the forefront
of a new way of doing business that is nothing short of revolutionary.
And with IT community leaders such as Showers, who chairs the
initiative, many believe the Coalition will continue to make
strides toward shaping St. Louis into a unique and vibrant IT
leader—not by imitating the patterns of successes in California,
Massa-chusetts and elsewhere, but by building on strengths already
here, both in the corporate and university communities—by shepherding
and making the best use of the region’s vast reserves of intellectual
capital, by mobilizing and leveraging existing talents and assets.
An initial challenge was to establish an identity for the Coalition,
to create a niche, something not unlike the BioBelt in terms
of impact. The region is renowned for its well-established life
sciences infrastructure and access to financial resources. In
this case, the IT Coalition has focused on how to marshal human
capital.
Today, industry observers say, one in three workers are “knowledge
workers;” that is, in some form or fashion they work in IT.
At present, there are more than 40,000 IT jobs in the bi-state
region. And, for now, demand is outstripping supply. Take leading
online brokerage Scottrade, a rapidly growing company with 650
employees in St. Louis. As the company’s need for IT professionals
grows apace, 10 percent of the available IT positions, about
65, remain presently unfilled, Scottrade officials say.
A term that has lost a bit of cachet over the last decade is
“paradigm shift,” mainly because it’s been used to describe
everything from a growing population of artificially stimulated
athletes to the sweeping changes in how business is conducted,
from financing to communication.
So, call it what you will, the Coalition is managing through
yet another paradigm shift, one where companies are moving their
investment capital to knowledge workers, rather than bricks
and mortar. Digital prosperity and economic prosperity go hand
in glove. It doesn’t matter where you are when you receive your
information, do something with it, and return it to the sender,
or move it on down the line.
Dozens upon scores upon thousands of wired (or wireless) St.
Louisans settle in at the PC or Mac, or grab a latte and hook
up the laptop at a Bread Co. or Starbucks, and go about doing
their 21st-century business. That’s a scenario we now take for
granted about as much as St. Louisans did a century ago by flipping
on a light switch. The distribution of electrical power in the
20th century was no more important to the region than IT is
today, observers say.
IT enables virtually all economic sectors to compete locally,
nationally and globally, as leaders in customer satisfaction
on a national basis with minimal staffing. This is the case
at Enterprise, at Anheuser-Busch, at Edward Jones, The Newberry
Group and countless other large or small companies with relatively
fewer people minding the store—all of whom have access to an
IT-enabled, global network. Instantaneously. Neiman-Marcus doesn’t
have a size seven narrow on the shelf in those Christian Laboutin
stilettos you absolutely have to have this weekend? The salesman
clicks a few buttons on the terminal (which back in the day
was known as a cash register), and they’ll be at your office
or on your doorstep tomorrow morning.
All of this is transparent to the customer. Enterprise is another
company driving the business model of many storefronts with
very efficient staffing. The associate doesn’t have to call
around to find the size, make or model of car a customer needs;
they see onscreen in real time what they’ll be able to deliver.
This is an enabling technology, not a differentiating technology.
One of the Coalition’s aims is to persuade new talent to stay
in town after graduation, or to attract IT whiz-kids to the
region, by letting everyone know about the dizzying number of
companies that offer IT job opportunities. It’s a good bet that
most 21-year-olds know that A-B is here, and maybe Monsanto
and a few other Fortune 500 companies. But that’s been about
it.
Since the late 1990s, Showers et al. have aimed to broaden that
knowledge. There was a lull after the dot-com bust, he says.
But the Coalition today boasts enough talent and energy to keep
the initiative buzzing, and to change the misperception that
St. Louis offers limited potential to the wünderkind whose potential
is unlimited.
“They’ve seen us as a one-trick pony, maybe three tricks at
the max,” Showers says. “We’ve been viewed as having all the
raw materials but not connecting the dots, if you will.”
It’s no longer a puzzle to those who’ve been connecting the
dots. But an continuing challenge will be to raise awareness
of the possibilities here to start a career, raise a family
and stay—not do three or four two-year stints at the few big
companies, then have to move to a coast for the “real career”.
Workforce retention is one of the Coalition’s most important
goals.
“There are literally hundreds of businesses in the region for
the best and the brightest,” emphasizes Brenda Newberry, a Coalition
member and head of The Newberry Group, a global IT consultancy.
But in some cases, international students and people of color
might not feel that way. The ethnically diverse environment
he or she experienced day-to-day in the classroom may not consistently
be evident in the workplace.
“They think, ‘I don’t see anyone here who looks like me.’ If
you’re a man considering an employer where you saw only women,
would you think you had an opportunity?”
Newberry points out that it really doesn’t matter what type
of company the candidate might be considering—they all have
an ever-increasing need for IT professionals.
“I’ve heard it said that Wal*Mart is an IT company that happens
to be in retail,” says Newberry.
Companies and regions either change with the times, or they
don’t. In the 1970s, now-vibrant cities throughout the Midwest
were within what was then disparaged as the Rust Belt. St. Louis
was similarly viewed, as a broken-down manufacturing town. But
today’s thriving companies were able to make the transition.
Among many examples is Brown Shoe, which metamorphosed from
a manufacturing giant into a master of international retail
trend forecasting and distribution, among other things.
As a fairly recent transplant from Virginia, Steve Hassell,
vice president and CIO of Emerson, can understand how outsiders
might think of St. Louis only in terms of A-B, The Redbirds
and The Arch.
Our regional IT revolution has been key to our evolution into
a stronger competitor, and will spur continued growth. It’s
certainly been the case with biotech.
“The conception of St. Louis as a manufacturing town has certainly
changed from a life-sciences perspective,” Hassell says. “Everybody
knows that sitting around waiting for the glory days of manufacturing,
it’s not going to happen.
“Since the caveman, business has gone through a continuous series
of changes, a never-ending evolution. You can delay the changes,
but you can’t say, ‘Stop the world, I want to get off’.”
Successful businesses need to manage information well. It’s
not so much amassing an army of geeks, but inspiring your IT
personnel to march in the right direction—based on a solid corporate
vision.
“People who are good at running computers have had to come out
of the data centers,” Hassell says. “Now, they must be good
at managing information.”
A fairly recent development: local start-ups and small companies
pairing up with large companies, to the benefit of both. An
entrepreneur with a viable idea needs support; financial, yes.
But mentoring, as well, and not necessarily the type from which
he or she already benefited in the university environment. More
and more entrepreneurs are able to bring their ideas to commercial
viability through affiliation with a major company.
Let’s imagine a startup housed at Anheuser-Busch. It might have
an office located on Pestalozzi Street, where the fledgling
businesspeople have an opportunity to zip down the hall and
brainstorm with A-B employees who in the not-too-distant future
may very well be their biggest customers. It’s a symbiotic relationship.
No one’s going to incubate another beer maker at A-B.
The Coalition aims to keep this trend in the public eye. To
wit: at the Emerging Technology Forum on July 12th, St. Louis-based
Fortune 500 company Express Scripts discussed how it is evaluating
Appistry’s application fabric software, concentrating on their
experiences using the product to re-engineer legacy systems
and build new software applications. Upcoming forum events are
slated for Oct. 11, 2007 and Jan. 10, 2008. Plans are to increase
the frequency of these confabs as the Coalition continues to
grow.
Competitions, and banquets to celebrate newly viable ventures,
are also part of the picture, notes Ron Daugherty of Daugherty
Business Solutions. His company, as does Newberry’s, represents
the one-time startup that a new IT framework for encouraging
and nurturing entrepreneurs will create. Another key, notes
Daugherty, is to show government leaders how the initiative
will boost the regional economy.
Through collaboration and mentoring, Coalition members foresee
building a thriving IT network—and construction has only just
begun.
“We’re bringing the community together from a communications
and networking perspective,” Daugherty says. “There had been
no good way to find out what’s going on across the IT community.”
In the works, notes Daugherty, is a web portal—a “one-stop shop”
for IT—emulating the St. Louis regional brand: “Perfectly Centered,
Remarkably Connected.”
This is, as Coalition members describe it, the genesis of “a
new entrepreneurial ecosystem.” Additionally, they point out
that the pool of possible entrepreneurs is much deeper than
the pool of those cultivating life-sciences ideas. Few IT startups
need wet labs and equipment.
What we see now—well, what we don’t see now, and can’t touch,
and although is termed “virtual” but generates dollars just
as real as any in the steel and concrete industry—are just the
first few circuits of a viral phenomenon that connects the guy
in his garage to the entrepreneur at Washington University,
the woman at her laptop with an idea to a company that could
be her source for manufacturing and distribution. It’s connecting
anyone and everyone who has the technology itch to the geek
community at large.
All that said, it can take a bit of a cat-herding mentality
to make things happen. What’s more, the Coalition didn’t want
to be a solution in search of a problem. Assembling a motley
crew of Silicon Valley-styled computer whizzes who might one
day develop powerful logistics for coordinating care among regional
hospitals—but more than likely come up with another ninja-warrior
video game—is not the intent.
Board members from large educational institutions, corporations
and healthcare organizations, to small startups behind the Coalition,
are tooling up the mechanism to harness the light bulbs of ideas
that pop on over entrepreneurs’ heads throughout the region.
As members of the Coalition point out: This isn’t IT for IT’s
sake. This is Beta IT.
IT
COALITION
BOARD OF DIRECTORS |
Mark Showers, Chief Information Officer, Monsanto
(Chairman)
Willem Bakker, President, TEC
Ron Daugherty, Daugherty Systems
Susan Elliot, Chairman and Co-CEO, SSE
Richard C.D. Fleming, President and CEO, RCGA
Mary Freeman, General Manager-MidAmerica, Microsoft
Corporation
Dr. Thomas E. George, Chancellor, University of Missouri-St.
Louis
Ed Glotzbach, President & Managing Partner, TPI Inc.
Steve Hassell, Vice President and Chief Information
Officer, Emerson
Rich Malone, Chief Information Officer, Edward Jones
Kent Neely, Dean, SIUE
Brenda Newberry, President and CEO, The Newberry
Group
William A. Peck, M.D., Director, Center for Health
Policy, Washington University
Dr. Catalin Roman, Professor and Chairman of Computer
Science and Engineering, Washington University
Dr. Henry Shannon, Chancellor, St. Louis Community
College
Greg Sullivan, CEO, Global Velocity
Kevin Westbrook, President and CEO, Millennium Digital
Media
Don C. Winter, Vice President-Engineering and Information,
The Boeing Company |
|
|
|
|
|
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
|
