Speakers gauge business climate at Economic Outlook Conference

The Springfield Business Development Corp. yesterday held its 11th annual Economic Outlook Conference at the University Plaza Hotel and Convention Center, which featured three national speakers who shared their thoughts on the broader business climate.

Roughly 250 people area professionals and community leaders attended the morning conference, which centered on the ever-changing needs of today’s workforce and entrepreneurs.

Speaker Yasuyuki Motoyama described entrepreneurism as the engine of the nation’s economy, but he said many institutions and communities are operating under false assumptions that business incubators, university research facilities and venture capitalists are effective generators of successful entrepreneurs. Through his research at the Kansas City-based entrepreneur-focused Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the senior scholar in research and policy has found that networking and mentorship opportunities, as well as access to skilled, local labor, are the most important ingredients for successful startups.

Of the nearly 500 companies interviewed that had been recognized by Inc. magazine in the past for year-over-year growth, only 6.5 percent had used venture capital dollars, while 67.2 percent used personal savings and 51.8 percent utilized bank financing, according to Motoyama. He said entrepreneurs should find mentors, such as other business owners willing to take a closer look at a startup’s operations, in order to produce staying power.
 
“You’re trying to do something new … so, it has to be tailored to your business,” Motoyama said. “And these connections have to be local. If it is a Web-based thing, and you are thousands of miles away, I don’t think you could establish an effective connection.”   

Sarah White, founder and principal adviser at Accelir, a Milwaukee, Wis.-based strategic advisory firm that focuses on human capital, has worked with more than 100 companies since 2005 to accelerate growth through talent attraction. During the SBDC conference, she said identifying ways to find the right employees should be a part of every company’s strategic planning process.

“Recruiting and hiring should not be administrative functions. They should be marketing functions,” White said, adding job descriptions are often uninspiring and could discourage the most talented employees. “It’s attracting people. It’s an introduction. Think of it like a Match.com profile for your company. It’s inviting them to come work for you. People spend more time at their jobs than they do with their families, so who in the world wants to go work for a boring company that lists 47 job requirements including interpersonal skills?”

She said business owners and human resources professionals should work together on how to best attract talent that fits within the culture of that business, and they should focus less on a potential hire’s skills and experience. The right person can gain experience on the job, but White said a person with experience who isn’t driven or passionate isn’t likely to help a business grow.

“Every human on Earth wants to be part of something. And they want to feel proud of what they’re included in,” White said. “Keep your job descriptions. Just don’t show them to anybody until they get further in the process. It’s like bringing out all the crazy on a first date. You don’t need to do that.”

In an increasingly global and technology-based economy, keynote speaker John Doggett said one of the keys to developing a skilled labor force that can compete with the rest of the world is to make teaching a more attractive profession among the highest-achieving students.

“I ask questions of my MBA students, who are some of the best in the country, ‘How many of you would want a job teaching to children?’ Occasionally, one will raise their hand,” said Doggett, a senior research fellow with the University of Texas’ IC2 Institute and co-founder of the school’s Idea to Product international technology commercialization competition.

He added many of the largest American tech companies such as Google routinely recruit foreign students.

“If you take the Indians, the Chinese, the Koreans, the Israelis and the French out of Silicon Valley, you’d eliminate a quarter of Silicon Valley," Doggett said. “We’ve got to do two things: We’ve got to get our kids excited about the technologies of the future, and we have to do everything we can to embrace foreign students who come over here and want to stay and become Americans.”

For its part, conference host SBDC – a subsidiary of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce – has helped 19 companies since 2012 create 1,022 local jobs representing $35.2 million in new annual payroll.[[In-content Ad]]