Tony IM’d me and said, “Job Churn (Startups+Failures) is significantly correlated to regional per capita growth“. He sent me a link to a site where I found this table, which paints a bleak picture especially when it comes tech jobs:

Information Technology Jobs
Employment in IT occupations in non-IT industries as a share of total jobs. rank: 29 score: 1.3%

What can we do about numbers like this? At least we’re above 21 states!

W. Dave Bayless mentions a report titled Five Myths About Entrepreneurs created by Patrick Von Bargen and his former colleagues at the National Commission on Entrepreneurship. Patrick is now with the National Center for Regional Innovation and Competitiveness and was in town for the Connection Series on Tuesday night! I heard from Valdis that he was very impressed with Mayor Campbell and the things she talked about in her speech.

It’s been brought to my attention that there’s another cool person spent some time in Cleve-O. This time it’s one of the co-founders of Adobe, Dr. Charles Geschke.

“Dubbed the ‘modern-day Gutenberg’, Dr. Charles M. Geschke helped revolutionize the desktop publishing era through Adobe Systems, the company he co-founded in 1982 with John Warnock. Without the applications Adobe developed, desktop publishing, and now Web publishing, would not be the same.”

“Geschke, like so many other key figures in computing history, did not stumble on to his success. He was well educated and had a wealth of experience in computing before founding Adobe. But, as was the case with many other notables, he benefited from some fortuitous timing.”

“Geschke was born in 1941, and he first studied at Xavier University in Ohio, earning a bachelor’s degree in classics and a master’s degree in mathematics. From 1963 to 1968, he taught mathematics at John Carroll University but decided to seek further education himself.”

A few important things about his story. He was well educated, had a wealth of experience, and benefited from fortuitous timing. Obviously, there’s no quick fixes.

I’ve added Marc Canter’s blog to my blogroll. Don’t know who Marc is? You should! He was one of the founders of Macromedia. What’s the Cleveland Connection? Oberlin Conservatory of Music with a custom degree in Intermedia in 1980. How cool is that?

From the Futurist Update, the newsletter of the World Future Society:

Shy people could become happier if they acted more outgoing, believes William Fleeson, Wake Forest University associate professor of psychology.

When study participants were asked to act outgoing, adventurous, or assertive -such as asking a question in class or flirting with someone attractive - they reported that they were having fun and felt happy, says Fleeson. When asked to act more passive and shy, the same participants reported feeling unhappy.

“As a society, we tend to think of happiness as something that comes from outside us. It’s kind of a radical idea that we have some control of happiness, that personality is a factor in happiness, and that, to some extent, we have control over our personalities,” Fleeson says. “The research demonstrates that extroversion can actually cause
happiness.”

I was carrying on a pleasant email conversation with a new RYZE friend, Mark Parr, who formerly was the director of the NW Ohio Regional Technology Alliance. He brought this information to my attention:

State Business Churning Figures (1998-2001)
The U.S economy experienced a turbulent year in 2001. However, small businesses demonstrated resilience and strength according to the Small Business Economic Indicators for 2001, a report released by the SBA Office of Advocacy. The February 2003 report states that although economic activity was sluggish in the months leading up to September 2001, economic output grew for the year as a whole.

In comparison to 2000, small businesses seemed to hold steady in 2001. The levels of employer firms and the self-employed were relatively consistent with previous year totals. While employer firm births showed a slight downward movement during the year and firm closures increased slightly, the most alarming number was the rise in business bankruptcies.

SSTI has prepared a table presenting “business churning” statistics and rankings for all 50 states and the District of Columbia over a four-year period from 1998-2001 using data from the SBA indicator report. Business churning is a measure of new firm births and existing firm deaths as a share of total firms. This churning increases as the number of new start-ups and existing business failures per year increases. Business churning is seen as a major driver of innovation and growth.

The entire table is available here.

Other state level data available in the report include the number of self-employed, business bankruptcies, and financial information. Industrial level data is provided for nonfarm private employment and the fastest and largest growing industries in 2000-2001. Other macro-level indicators for the U.S. economy are presented as well. Small Business Economic Indicators for 2001 can be downloaded here.

The root of the issue is that Ohio is almost dead last when it comes to starting new business! Why isn’t anyone addressing it?

Wow! If you weren’t at the Web Marketing Seminar that Sage and Rocky did today, then your website is falling farther and farther behind in the search engines. Too bad! You’ve got a local company that specializes in marketing your company on the net, and you’ve probably never heard of them. Not to mention they gave away some really nice coffee mugs to a few knowledgable people. I was lucky enough to be able to name a spidering search engine other than Google (oops. maybe I’m not allowed to use their name!) Just so you know, it’s AllTheWeb. Next time they put on a seminar, you darn well better go!

Check out what Jack is saying on his blog:

“Cleveland, like its sister cities of similar size and challenges around the country, is said to have a self-esteem issue. However anyone attending the last couple Connections Series events might consider otherwise. There is a critical mass of people who are daily practitioners of appreciative inquiry relative to the business, arts, spiritual, social, and ethnic communities woven into our dynamic fabric…”