By Jim Baer
There’s an old axiom about
St. Louis that held true for decades. After the turn of the century, St. Louis became famed for industrial and manufacturing growth and a catch phrase quickly took shape: “First in booze, first in shoes…and last in the American League.”
St. Louis then had towering manufacturing giants from the beer industry, led by Anheuser-Busch, the Falstaff Brewing Co., Lemp Beer, Griesedieck Bros Beer, Stag Beer and a host of others. Brown Shoe Co. and many other footwear industry-based companies dominated the downtown-manufacturing district along Washington Avenue and throughout Southeast Missouri. Today, only A-B produces beer on a major scale, and Brown Shoe continues to grow, the rest of the jobbers are long gone, and the American League Browns fled to Baltimore as the old St. Louis Browns morphed into the Baltimore Orioles.
About 1979, St. Louis, along with most other major cities began a slow downward inescapable decline in manufacturing jobs. The present day local work force of 53,150 high-paying, highly skilled IT jobs has surpassed the hourly wage earning manufacturing-based positions. The innovative technology world in St. Louis shares competitive space with the high-tech demand in Mecca's such as the Silicone Valley in California; the Research Triangle in North Carolina and major eastern seaboard cities the likes of New York, Boston, Providence, R.I. and Baltimore.
However, to a point, the rapid growth in
IT locally has been somewhat of a "well
kept secret," at least according to Karlos Bledsoe, Business Unit Leader at Edward Jones Co., St. Louis Society for Information Management member, and chairman of
the Gateway to Innovation Technology Conference held recently in St. Louis.
"Sometimes we are our own worst
promoters. The purpose of the conference was to bring in IT giants and talk about the growth spurt in the industry, and how it affects the local business climate. More than 100 specialists attended the conference and it was an unqualified success," states Bledsoe.
Bledsoe promises more activity going forward. The 2009 Gateway to Innovation Conference is presently being planned, and local officials will host two smaller, but equally important best practice forums related to the topic in 2008 and 2009.
This group is serious about making an impact upon the community. The conference leaders collected cash then donated $5,000 to the Edgewood Children's Center in St. Louis.
What Dr. Atkinson Had to Say
Dr. Robert Atkinson, president for Information Technology and Innovation Foundation in Washington, D.C. was keynote speaker at the conference.
He talked about national trends, and how IT directly affects the local business community today. He cited key examples of industry growth. "Companies today, as diverse as Wal-Mart and Amazon.com would not be where they are today without the major impact of the IT business," said Dr. Atkinson.
"The power of the IT revolution is in
productivity." He cited Moore's Law as a
for-instance. "Storage of information is so cheap today. In 1978 what it cost to store information (Microsoft's free Windows
hotmail service) was $480 and today that cost is just $2 for the same equivalent
information stored in 2003."
About Wal-Mart and Amazon, he had this to say. "Wal-Mart is able to identify and locate products in regional centers and bring them to their stores at low costs. They are using radio frequency tags to replace bar codes on products. This reasonably scaled overhead allows the company to maintain low prices for its customers. "Without a strong IT presence, things would be chaotic at Wal-Mart," he estimates. Meanwhile, Amazon for the longest time has offered unusual boutique, one-of-a-kind items for its diverse customer base. "IT leads to more efficiency, lower costs and enables that company to sell scarce products at reasonable costs," said Dr. Atkinson.
IT knows no limits these days. For instance, technology can digitize a refrigerator to keep a continuous rolling inventory of product used by the consumer. The usage of products can be monitored by computer chips, and reorders can be placed automatically at the local grocery store. Innovation in IT has led to the growth of hybrid cars, the development of the human genome and other modern-age phenomenons. "Self-checking at the airport, and checking in on line has led to lower labor costs and lower overhead for the struggling airline industry," Dr. Atkinson gave as a for instance.
Another example comes in the growth of the digitized camera industry. "Everything that can be digitized will be digitized. Paper work has been replaced in diverse areas as e-tickets, e-cash, e-forms, e-music, movies, books and e-banking. The Kodak Co. had
to adapt to that concept or they would
have perished some time ago reasoned
Dr. Atkinson.
What Does All This Mean to St. Louis?
Bledsoe was quick to point to the growth/and or lack of it with local companies. "Companies locally that have made IT a priority have shown growth, while those who did not have struggled." He pointed to the decline in business locally for the May Co. and the Ford Motor Co. Conversely, those companies quick to embrace IT growth have prospered. That local growth list includes Edward Jones, Scottrade, Enterprise Rent-A-Car, Wachovia/A.G. Edwards, and all the big local banks.
"The companies who embrace IT growth are producing higher wage positions (the 13 largest IT shops regionally produce cumulative salaries of $4 billion per annum with the average per job presently hovering around $70,000 yearly plus benefits," says Bledsoe. "St. Louis as a region, has more computing jobs in percentage of all jobs in IT and a lower percentage of jobs in manufacturing so we are definitely on the right track," says the Edward Jones official.
Dr. Atkinson pointed to St. Louis as being in the sweet spot for technology based growth. By that, he meant we have companies who use IT technology, not companies (Cisco, Microsoft, and Dell) who manufacture the IT products.
Atkinson says St. Louis has done a very good job of attracting IT-based companies
to set up shop in the region. Case in point is the addition of MasterCard to OÕFallon, Mo. As stated clearly by the keynote speaker,
"St. Louis is no longer just a blue collar town."
St. Louis may never be quite as influential as say San Jose or a Boston in the IT
world. But clearly, the city is becoming a major center for workers attracted to the
industry. Key prominent local leaders
continue to make IT a significant component for the areaÕs most successful and progressive companies. The results are obviously showing.
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