Tech era needs new strategies

Graves

Pletz

Economic development once was almost exclusively a smokestack-chasing pursuit that had officials attempting to poach a factory and all its jobs from other states.

Today's hot prospects of biotechnology and other high-tech enterprises are much different than manufacturing. And they require a much different approach.

"Increasingly, the emphasis in Kansas City is let's build it here," Carl Schramm, president of the Ewing MarionKauffman Foundation, told hundreds of business and civic leaders who gathered downtown last week for the annual meeting of the Kansas City Area Development Council.

Ewing M. Kauffman, the founder of the organization Schramm leads, offered outspoken encouragement and a strong example about the potential power of an entrepreneurial venture. Kauffman created Marion Laboratories Inc., which grew from a business run out of his basement to become a major employer and a force in the pharmaceutical industry.

"Mr. K saw entrepreneurship as a way not only to grow the community, but the entire country," Schramm said.

The Kansas City development council embraced this ideal with its "energy of entrepreneurship" theme for its annual program. As the group marked its progress in the past year, homegrown successes shared the spotlight with new arrivals.

Euronet Worldwide Inc., Garmin Ltd. and Cerner Corp. are examples of rapidly growing companies in the area that began as startups created by local entrepreneurs.

"Up-and-coming businesses are on the move in our region," said Karen Pletz, president and chief executive officer of Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences and a new co-chairwoman of the development council.

Pletz succeeds Kevin Barth, president of Commerce Bank, who completed a two-year term with the council. She will share the development council's co-chairmanship duties with Greg Graves, president and chief executive officer of Burns & McDonnell.

Expanding the number of life sciences companies in the region, particularly those in the animal health industry, is a top initiative for Pletz and Graves.

One of the development council's most recent successes involved persuading OncImmune, a British biotechnology company, to establish a laboratory and North American headquarters in Lenexa. While the company was not founded here, its success will depend heavily on its collaboration with local university researchers and IBT Reference Laboratory.

Development council leaders played a key role in connecting OncImmune executives with scientists who could help develop the company's cancer detection technology.

A new talent recruitment initiative marks another way the development council is expanding beyond its traditional business attraction approaches. One part of the effort involves emphasizing the region's interesting career and recreation opportunities in a glossy magazine called KC Options.

"We have to be competitors in the race for talent," said Bob Marcusse, president and chief executive officer of the development council. "We want to make Kansas City a reason to accept a job and not an excuse not to."

Successfully tapping education and research resources is critically important to the future growth of the economy, said David G. Thomson, a business consultant and author of Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential Growth.

"America is in an innovation race," Thomson said. "It is about next-generation jobs, the quality jobs."

To reach Jason Gertzen, call (816) 234-4899 or send e-mail to jgertzen@kcstar.com.