SEK Economic Prosperity Won’t Come from Government or Traditional Economic Development

For the last several years, many of us in Southeast Kansas have come to realize that the traditional “business attraction” model has become ineffective as a primary strategy to drive our area economy. In desperation, many communities grasp at this straw, willing to make nearly unsupportable concessions in the name of being attractive. When a city ponies up three year’s worth of free rent, insurance and property tax abatements on a five year lease, it makes one wonder if the benefits outweigh the cost. It may be like getting caught up in bidding at an auction, ending up paying more than the item is worth.


It’s also becoming clear to many of us that creating an environment of “cultural” innovation is really the essential ingredient to our growth and prosperity in the future.

A successful 2011 SEK Innovation Summit last September reinforces this notion. We have several great innovators in the region; they are doing well. We need to build on what they have started and inspire others in our businesses, organizations and governmental units to incorporate innovation into the fabric, or culture, of the way they carry out their business.

When it comes right down to it, businesses, organizations and governments are supposed to be providing products and services that help people have better lives. Innovation is about using creativity to continuously develop new ways to serve. In business, the innovators are the ones that will survive and flourish—recession or no.

For organizations, the innovators will be the ones that make scarce resources help the greatest number of people. For governments—at all levels—but especially on the state and local level, the good innovators will not only provide the services their constituents want, but will do so with a helpful attitude that will actually make people want to live and build businesses within their jurisdictions, rather than leave for greener pastures.

Innovation starts with creative thoughts and ideas about better solutions. The creative ideas become innovations when we’ve executed a plan to implement new solutions. Most people have trouble thinking creatively although we could all do it when we were children. Our creative thoughts came about freely as we played and used our imaginations. As we grew older, many of our parents and teachers worked to “straighten us up” and get “serious” about life. “You can’t be daydreaming when you should be working on your lessons,” they said.

Reports from many, many teachers say we are only teaching toward satisfactory scores on the standardized tests. After decades of this “standardization” and trying to make all students think the same way we now have a couple of generations of us that think we can’t think creatively.

At the Innovation Summit, Praveen Gupta, Innovation facilitator and teacher demonstrated a sample of the “Nuts and Bolts of Innovation”. He started by having everyone get up and get a double handful of Tinker Toys from a large suitcase. As everyone began making creations, he had us all think of ideas to improve Southeast Kansas in four categories: good ideas; crazy ideas; funny ideas’ and stupid ideas.

For most, the act of playing with creative toys, coupled with encouragement of good, crazy, funny and stupid ideas exposed a part of our brain not used much since we were children. The resulting ideas from this session in those self-assigned categories appear on the Innovate SEK web site at www.InnovateSEK.org. Look for the Idea Lab menu link and the link that says “How do We Improve Southeast Kansas?” The suggestions from summit attendees are posted in a blog format so you can add your own ideas.

The answers to economic prosperity in Southeast Kansas lies within each one of us, buried in our brains behind all those years of “standardization”. The answers won’t come from the government. All we can hope for from the government is for them to provide the collective services we want at a reasonable price and to quit scaring us with thoughts of higher taxes. The answers won’t come in the form of some big company riding into the area on a white horse. The answers will come in the form of innovative companies, large and small, developed and grown from within by company owners and employees that adopt a “culture” of innovation.