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9 Responses to “Entrepreneurs EDGE highlights regional strengths in middle market companies”

1. John Polk Says:
   May 20th, 2009 at 10:54 pm

   The companies on Kirk’s list are the REAL leaders in regional economic development…and virtually to a company, they avoid the intrigue and white noise which characterize our local development like the plague…All they do is stick to their knitting, grow and add thousands of real, long-term jobs to Northeast Ohio. They have great economic power…and could have political power if it were inportant to them…

2. Ed Morrison Says:
   May 21st, 2009 at 4:45 pm

   Yes, and what’s odd to me — something I have never understood — is why Kirk’s efforts receive so little support within the region from economic development organizations and the foundations.

   Kirk is positioned right in the middle of the critical network — Stage 2 companies geared for growth.

3. Carla Says:
   May 21st, 2009 at 6:32 pm

   @John Polk: Companies should NOT have political power. This is a huge problem that threatens to swallow our democracy. I am surprised that you would say, so blithely “they….could have political power if it were important to them.”

4. John Polk Says:
   May 21st, 2009 at 8:06 pm

   I respect you point of view, Carla, but I disagree with you completely…

   Politics is an amoral process; by itself, it’s neither good nor bad. It’s the people who use the process who make it work for good or bad ends.

   You may have read the quote from W.B Yeats: “The best lack all conviction; the worst are filled with passionate intensity.” The problem with political power is that the wrong people tend to seek it.

   If our elected officials…federal, state, or local…were to think about economic policy from the standpoint of entrepreneurial capitalists who were actually growing companies in the region, do you think we’d see them doing the same things we see them doing now?

   People who consider themselves “not political” will always be taken advantage of by those who use politics as a means to their ends.

   And I have seen first-hand over many, many years countless times when legislation or government policies which might really help growing companies are thrown under the bus because the corporate behemoths who control the process persuade policymakers that helping growing companies must in some way disadvantage the big guys.

   During my waning days running COSE, we had begun to achieve real, tangible results as advocates for the interests of smaller businesses in government, on matters that mattered to them. But because our successes were viewed as undercutting “the corporate agenda,” the organization was basically lobotomized and eviscerated.

   If only the bad guys run the political process, who’s standing up for the little guy?…

   That’s why you want the people growing real companies and creating real jobs on that wall. But it’s also a key reason why so few of them are part of the local “process:” in general, they are unwelcome.

   How do you propose to change the status quo?…Like it or not, the only way to change a power structure is with a different sort of power.

   What if the region had a different cadre of business leaders?…Think they might provide a little counterpoint to the current corporate institutional culture?

5. John Polk Says:
   May 21st, 2009 at 8:31 pm

   Ed, I’d certainly encourage Kirk to answer your question from his own perspective (and I believe he DID receive a little help from the Civic Innovation Lab), but my comments above are at least part of the answer. The Men Behind The Curtain really don’t care very much about what the folks growing mid-market companies think about economic development. These entrepreneurs tend to have highly-tuned BS detectors, and are intolerant of layers of “process.”

   They also tend to be quite autonomous; they have the ability to do pretty much whatever they want, and tend to choose community involvement which they find satisfying. That’s a far cry from the “go along to get along” spirit of corporate Cleveland.

   (I once had a very senior corporate guy tell me that business people who didn’t support United Way were anti-community philanthropy. That’s the mindset: if you’re not doing what WE think is important, you’re just not cool.)

   COSE sought for awhile to “own” the middle-market “space,” but found it had very little to offer these companies. Their most commonly-stated need was for some kind of workforce-preparedness program to make it easier for them to recruit employees, but we know that GCP doesn’t do that.

   It’s also true that successful entrepreneurs tend to have strong views of their own, and don’t really see being “at the table” with the corporate oligarchs to be such a big deal. The corporate guys, as you probably know, believe that EVERYONE secretly wants to be just like them.

   (I know a very successful entrepreneur leader who dared question Mike White in a GCGA Board meeting several years ago. The meeting ended at 9 am. By 4:30 he’d received a letter thanking him for his Board service and telling him to kiss off).

   Our late mutual friend Richard Shatten once told me that our community’s leaders should be going to the region’s growth company entrepreneurs on their knees, pleading to learn ways to assist them in continuing to grow in Northeast Ohio, and celebrating every new investment. But such an effort requires a measure of humility. And GCP doesn’t do that, either…

6. Carla Says:
   May 21st, 2009 at 9:37 pm

   “Like it or not, the only way to change a power structure is with a different sort of power.” John, I certainly agree with you there.

   It makes perfect sense that our elected officials do the bidding of the wealthy interests (be they corporations, trade associations, unions or individuals) who pay for their incredibly expensive campaigns.

   But IMHO, it does not serve the country well. Much was made of Barack Obama running a campaign financed by small donations from individuals, and I’m sure he did get many of those. But he also raised millions and millions from big wigs in the finance industry, and it shows, doesn’t it? Just one example among many…

   Anyway, what you say about the entrepreneurs seems to be true…they’re too busy actually getting things done to bother with the corporate oligarchy, and good for them!

   Maybe if our campaigns were publicly funded, we would have a better chance of our “public servants” actually noticing the public, including small businesses and entrepreneurs. The big corporations would manage to survive somehow.

7. Ed Morrison Says:
   May 23rd, 2009 at 7:30 am

   John:

   You touched on a facet of Cleveland’s leadership that I have always found puzzling: a remarkable lack of humility in the face of the complexity of transforming a regional economy.

   Traditional models of economic development no longer work. Simplistic admonitions to promote public-private partnerships (a development mantra of the 1980s) has given way to figuring out how to guide strategy in complex open networks…no easy task.

   This morning’s paper carries a good quote from Ben Bernanke’s commencement speech to the Boston College Law School on how to manage in these complex times:

   “There is much that I don’t know,” Bernanke said. “I consequently try to be attentive to all points of view, to work collaboratively and to involve as many smart people in policy decisions as possible.”

   On a hopeful note, new leaders are emerging in this region who adhere to these principles.You will not find these emerging leaders in any directory or listed in any book. These leaders are emerging because they adhere to the same views articulated by Bernanke.

   These emerging leaders are generating the “different sort of power” of which you spoke: (“Like it or not, the only way to change a power structure is with a different sort of power.”)

8. John Polk Says:
   May 24th, 2009 at 7:38 pm

   An essential element of humility is the willingness to put the interest of the greater community ahead of one’s own. In general, GCP’s behavior displays the antithesis of humility.

   The shameless promotion of the self-interests of a very few self-dealing insiders, and the ruthless pursuit of bureaucratic power and compensation by the staff leaders, leaves no room for openness to the possibility that they might have anything to learn.

   How else to explain GCP’s obsessive pursuit of its two “holy grails”…a convention center and casino gambling…despite reams of data and tons of experience from other communities showing very clearly that these strategies don’t work?

   People who are actively growing companies, and who must contend daily with the realities of the marketplace, have no room to accommodate such nonsense.

   And those who must pursue goals which they know to be intellectually dishonest, often using methods they know to be unethical, can’t afford knowledge; it interferes with their biases. So in the dilemma between curious, enlightened leadership and autocratic power, they have chosen power.

9. Ed Morrison Says:
   May 29th, 2009 at 6:27 am

   If Cleveland’s business leadership had a little humility, they would be perfect.

   (Apologies to Ted Turner.)