Clusters are big and small business

"Speaking earlier Friday morning to more than 300 members and guests of the Forum Club at Sun City Hilton Head, [Governor] Sanford said that after years of reliance on big business, such as textiles and other manufacturing, South Carolina is now a small-business state."

Well. How about South Carolina is a big business and a small business state?

Clusters make both small and big companies more globally competitive.

BMW gets it!

It's not either/or - small business versus big business - it's both.

Clusters in a culture of poverty

I was struck this morning by an AP story, Rita’s victims differ from Katrina’s.

I remember scenes of people in New Orleans after the hurricane wagging their finger into the camera and saying, "Where are you? You have got to come get us."

Which was true, but it begged the question why there were so many people in need of being gotten in the first place. Bottom line is that there was a culture of poverty in New Orleans so insidious that large numbers of people there either could not or would not get out of the way of a hurricane.

As if this needed to be highlighted, television news reports showed very few victims of Rita in need of immediate rescue. Surely some of this was because "a new sense of urgency following Katrina led to a more thorough evacuation." But probably a much larger impact was because, "most of Rita's victims ... are less likely to live in poverty, more likely to own a car, and less likely to be a member of a minority."

At home, we feel a sense of urgency to increase our knowledge base in order to create a more innovative and productive economy. We have our own challenges here with people that live in a culture of poverty.

How do we increase the knowledge base of a community of people that will not or can not get out of the way of a hurricane? That challenge seems as overwhelming as a hurricane itself.

Research Week I: Clemson University Restoration Institute

The Clemson University Restoration Institute (CURI) will be a major new research campus 82 acres of land and associated improvements, valued at $14.5 million, contributed by the City of North Charleston. $10.3 million of funding was also received for this project South Carolina Research University Infrastructure Bond Act.

The vision of the CURI is to provide sustainable and cost effective solutions to the ecological and built infrastructure restoration challenges facing industries, professions, and communities throughout the state, nation, and world.

A major center piece of the campus will be the restoration of the War Between The State era submarine, the CSS Hunley.

Charleston is the perfect place to a globally competitive cluster around restoration technologies and innovations.

Research Week II: Innovista at the University of SC

The University of South Carolina has announced Innovista, a mammoth new project spreading out over 200 acres and combining 5 million square feet of research labs, office space, mixed-use retail and affordable residential housing in Columbia. The project is a unique new "innovation district," whose "vision is urban—with faculty and private researchers and their families living next to, or over, where they work. And only a short walk or bike ride from parks, restaurants, entertainment, shopping, schools, and recreation."

"A major Innovista element is the focus on research aimed at the emerging technologies and intellectual clusters—Biomedical, Environmental, Nanotechnology, and Future Fuels—that companies will find extremely valuable in the global economy."

The ambition of Innovista is that for "the next 100 years as it creates a magnet for attracting the world’s brightest minds and most innovative companies to South Carolina."

Research Week III: Greenville Hospital

Greenville Hospital System will build a health sciences institute to help take research innovations from the lab to the marketplace. GHS is providing 22 acres for the $20 million, 100,000-square-foot facility.

Clemson pledged $7 million while USC committed $2.5 million toward that project. Another $2.5 million pledged by MUSC for the project is forthcoming. Greenville Hospital System has pledged $9 million for two buildings at its Patewood and main campuses.

The institute is part of Health Sciences South Carolina, a collaborative including GHS, Palmetto Health, and the Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System, along with the Medical University of South Carolina, the University of South Carolina, and Clemson University. The obective of the collaborative is to drive economic growth by fostering research the partners hope will attract biotechnology companies and promote development of better-paying jobs. There has been over $80 million investment by partners in healthsciences research.

Research Week IV: Advanced Materials

Across the state, there were annoucements this week of initiatives in advanced materials research.

The University of South Carolina NanoCenter, a 90,000-square-foot, public-private complex has a total of $35 million in investments. $10.8 million from the State of South Carolina was announced this week, to compliment $17.5 million of private investment by developer Craig Davis. The USC NanoCenter is the University’s focal point for science and engineering studies of nanometer-scale structures, their unique properties, and their integration into functional units.

Clemson announced a $5 million investment by the State of South Carolina in Innovation Center at the Clemson Research Park. The 40,000-square-foot building will house small, young high-technology companies that focus on photonics (electromagnetic energy), nanotechnology (atom-sized technology) and biomaterials. The building will be a neighbor to the Advanced Materials Research Lab, whose major occupant of the Clemson Advanced Materials Research Lab, is the Center for Optical Materials Science and Engineering Technologies.

COMSET is a partner in the Carolinas MicroOptic Triangle, which published it first newsletter this week, and will be featured at the Zoom Zone Showcase for the Advanced Materials and Manufacturing industry on October 13-14 at the Civic Center of Anderson.

What's the visceral essence of the movement we are experiencing?

There was a discussion at the SC Council on Competitiveness Friday that we need to capture the visceral essence of the movement that is afoot - that emotional, top-of-mind thing people are yearning for.

How about you? You are investing time seeking something. You are taking time to read this. What's the visceral essence of what you are after?

Quick, right now while it is fresh on your mind, leave a comment listing the top two or three words that popped into your mind when you read that question.

Suck and Blow versus The Swamp Fox Model of High-Impact Companies

Two Greenville entrepreneurs, Doug Hamer and Brian Higgins, created an extreme product - a gelatin bar drink called Suck & Blow, which is featured as the cover story in the business section of Sunday's Greenville News. They have created a high-impact company to move from "early stages of the rollout... [where they] are currently selling their product in South Carolina, Tennessee, Massachusetts and Nevada ... to distributing shortly in other states and internationally in Canada, Mexico and Asia."

In Swamp Fox Insights, I describe a systematic, risk managed process for commercializing innovations. Does Hamer's and Higgins' experience match the Swamp Fox Model?

Visualize A Significant Opportunity: "Inspiration does not magically appear out of the ether of the universe but comes from very human leaders."

Doug Hamer was spending a July afternoon on Port Royal Sound near Beaufort in 2001 [and] ... having a grand time when he simultaneously spied a woman slurping a Jell-O shooter from a plastic cup and a guy doing the old frat-house rendition of "funneling" a beer from a long plastic tube." I immediately thought it would be really neat to put the two ideas together," Hamer recalled.

Assemble Outstanding Leadership: "Serial entrepreneurship is one of the most important elements of a highly innovative culture."

Hamer's first job was delivering the old Greenville Piedmont in his neighborhood near Greenville Country Club when he was 11... He learned from two of Greenville's best-known entrepreneurs Charlie Houser and Leighton Cubbage as an employee of Corporate Telemanagement Group, a long distance company that was sold to LCI International in 1995.

Articulate A Compelling Strategy: "Most successful high-growth companies are built not by introducing radical technical innovations but by using existing components and technologies to create products that precisely meet the evolving needs of a new and emerging base of customers. "

First came the experiments with ingredients and the delivery system. They would buy tubing from Lowe's and mix their gelatin cocktail using Kraft's Extreme Jell-O, vodka and water. "We had to experiment to get the texture just exactly right," Hamer said...

Locally, Suck & Blow is carried by many of the liquor and party stores and is sold at numerous bars, including Wild Wing Cafe in downtown Greenville. "We like it because it goes along with our party atmosphere," said Josh Pair, a manager at Wild Wing. "Wild Wing has a menu that is based on sharing, and these things fit right in. Plus, they're good sellers. Once you see one go out, it's not long before another 10 go out."

Execute A Focused Plan:"Commercializing disruptive innovations is inheriently a learning process, and the most successful strategies usually identify incremental milestones, attract resources necessary to achieve those milestones, and then adjust based on what is learned about the developing market."

They would make upwards of 250 tubes of the concoction and take it with them on trips to the beach, tailgating parties and the like. After a Fourth of July party in 2003, they decided it was time to go into business. "We had made 500 of them for the party, and people went straight through them," Higgins said. "We figured it was time to start selling them."

To make the leap from party curiosities to a marketable product took several steps. First, they would need a way to manufacture the tubes. They would also need a recipe that would be approved by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the Tobacco Trade Bureau, a bottling company and a distribution network.

And there was another crucial component: money. Neither Hamer nor Higgins had much of that, and they made what would prove to be a tough decision. Rather than seek out investors with deep pockets who might want to control their destiny, they financed SAB Enterprises on small investments and loans from friends and family and on their own credit cards. It was a model that has led to sleepless nights, many highs and lows, but it has also kept them firmly in charge.

They took Suck & Blow to the Night Club & Bar Show in Las Vegas in March 2004 and were voted one of the top five booths among 2,000 vendors. "We left that show as high as we could be. We knew we had a hit." Hamer said.

The acid test of any model is can it be used to accurately predict reality. The experience of Harner and Higgins in commercializing Suck and Blow matches up pretty well with The Swamp Fox Model's description of how successful high-impact companies are actually created.

Swamp Fox Insights: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in a Time of Profound Change at Amazon.com

Regionalism and the Southeastern Innovation Corridor

At the end of InnoVenture 2004, one of the venture capitalists attending gave us an "A" for energy, enthusiasm, and collaboration, but a charitable "D" for the quality of the companies seeking venture capital. She said she was looking for "a pipeline of emerging companies with game changing innovations."

To do that we needed to target a region with a critical mass of innovation and talent. For InnoVenture 2005, we defined to target geography as the Southeastern Innovation Corridor - from Birmingham to Research Triangle Park and from Oak Ridge to Charleston. In this region are 2 national labs, 16 research universities, and 23 million people. The critical mass of innovation and talent in this region is competitive on a global basis.

Too often we force economic development into political boundaries that don't match up with our natural business relationships. The politics ought to follow the market, not the other way around.

I was struck recently when I read a invitation from the Piedmont Triad Entrepreneurial Network inviting people to attend a regional meeting.

There is a very good chance your most profitable prospect may be headquartered in Hickory.

The maverick you need for the new marketing push is based in Matthews.

The winning technology you need to license is in Wilmington.

The strategic partner you need to turbocharge growth is already aggressively attacking your niche from Apex.

But you will never know if you restrict yourself regionally?

The Piedmont Triad Entrepreneurial Network is on the right track.

InnoVenture recognized by Innovision Awards

Several years ago, Deloitte provided the leadership to create the InnoVision Awards program "promoting technology-based solutions and businesses, highlighting and encouraging innovation, and recognizing those who excel at it." From the beginning, the Innovision Awards has been a first class event, with a strong advisory board of technology leaders in the Upstate.

InnoVenture is extremely pleased that this year we have been named as a finalist in the Community Service Award category.

Enlightened Leadership

Many vicissitudes are creating turbulence in our society.

We are making progress in improving education, but the rest of the world is accelerating so fast that that the gap between where we are and where we need to be to remain globally competitive is growing.

Parts of our economy are being dislocated as the global winds blow, and individuals' lives are being impacted in painful ways. Some South Carolina manufacturers can not figure out how to be profitable with South Carolina workers, but the Chinese are building research and development facilities in Camden.

Among the devastation wrought by Katrina is the ripping open of the wound of race in this country.

Brad Warthen, the Editorial Page Editor of The State, and I had an email discussion about education and agreed that we need enlightened leadership to guide us through the vicissitudes of education. It's also true for economic, and racial and other vicissitudes we face.

The challenge of our society is to find that enlightened leadership, and then to rally around and support them. In the highly polarized world we live in, that is a very tall order.

Vicissitudes: Education

"SAT scores show state should stay the course"

This is the headline of a Sunday editorial by Inez Tenenbaum in the Greenville News making the point that SAT scores have improved significantly in recent years. If gauged by a measure she believes is more accurate, the National Assessment of Educational Progress:

South Carolina has made a tremendous investment in high standards and accountability, in financial and human terms. Our system is respected around the nation as one of the toughest and most rigorous. Most important of all, it is working -- by virtually any standard and virtually any measure.

In another article titled "America must produce more new engineers" that appeared in the Courier Post Online last Sunday, Frank Radcioppi observes:

According to the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, there are now more graduates of fast-food management universities than there are engineers in the United States... A study of math and science skills by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development found that U.S. students ranked 24th out of the 29 countries evaluated. More disturbing is that 38 percent of all engineers with doctorates in the United States are immigrants.

Incremental improvements in the way we educate are children are fine and good. It's better than going the other direction.

But we are facing down the barrel of a long-term crisis greater than 9-11 or Katrina. We are at risk of losing our competitive advantage globally. We need a Manhattan Project or a Man To the Moon commitment to radically overhaul our system of education, and we need it today.

Unfortunately this crisis is not occurring in the midst of a world war or the launching of Sputnik. It is a slow burn. Will we react before it is too late?

Vicissitudes: Economy

A headline in The State screams "Foreign competition [is] taking jobs from S.C."

Federal data analyzed by The State newspaper [shows] more than 53,000 South Carolina workers at 423 sites lost their jobs since 1994 because:

• The employers moved their jobs to countries where people work for less money.

• Cheaper imports cut the demand for the goods made in South Carolina.

Recognizing that a lack of productivity is at the heart of the problem, Linda Floyd, a program coordinator with the S.C. Employment Security Commission, said

It is hard to motivate middle-age people to go back to school. They’re often intimidated by the idea of college, especially after spending 20 years in a factory... You’re 42-years-old and you’ve got about 20 more years in the work force. How do you want to spend it? Being a cashier at Wal-Mart is fine if that’s what you want to do for the next 20 years.

Lewis Gossett, president of the S.C. Manufacturers Alliance (and perhaps the organization that wanted this in the paper), says "By and large, the quality of the jobs being lost is not being replaced."

But is it not South Carolina workers who are solely to blame. The Charlotte Observer notes that of all people, "China-based Haier adds workers, goes for bigger U.S. profits."

As the Carolinas have mourned the loss of traditional manufacturing jobs to China, Haier represented the flip side when it opened a $40 million, 350,000-square-foot Camden plant with 27 workers in 2000. It now employs 225 in this city about 110 miles south of Charlotte.

Over the next six months, the company plans to set up the research and design center on its 110 acres on a former hay field. Haier will service its U.S.-made refrigerators and send ideas about American tastes back to China for the development of other products.

So here we are. South Carolina manufacturers are bemoaning the fact that "foreign competition [is] taking jobs from S.C." while the Chinese are adding jobs and investing in research and development in Camden.

Some South Carolina manufacturers can not figure out how to be profitable with South Carolina workers, but Chinese manufacturers can. Is that a wake up call or what?

Vicissitudes: Race

Among other devastation, Katrina has ripped open the very deep fault line of race in this country. It's difficult to build communities of innovation or anything else when we have such different prisms through which we interpret the world around us.

Some see racism in the response to Katrina

Rev. Al Sharpton - "If we were not dealing with black people and poor people, we would not be dealing with this snail's pace reaction."

U.S. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), (Congressional Black Caucus member) - "People see class, and they also see race. [The conditions in New Orleans] just tended to dramatize the plight of a segment of the population that has been left out and behind."

Jessie Jackson - "Today, as the President comes to Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi for his ceremonial trip to look at the victims of the devastation, he would do well to have a plan more significant than a ceremonial tour... His whole response is unacceptable. How can blacks be locked out of the leadership (of the relief), and trapped in the suffering? It is that lack of sensitivity and compassion that represents a kind of incompetence."

Kanye West (black rapper) - "I hate the way they portray us in the media. If you see a black family, it says they're looting. See a white family, it says they're looking for food... They've given them permission to go down and shoot us... George Bush doesn't care about black people."

David Billings (of the People's Institute, a 25-year-old New Orleans organization focused on ending racism) - "I do think the nation would be responding differently if they were white elderly and white babies actually dying on the street."

Yvette Brown (African-American evacuee from New Orleans) - "You want to know why all those black people are stuck down there dying? If they were white, they'd be gone. They'd be sending in an army of helicopters, jets and boats."

But others see it differently

U.S. Rep. Stephanie Tubbs Jones, D-Ohio - "The issue is not about race right now. There will be another time to have issues about color."

Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice - "That Americans would somehow, in a color-affected way, decide who to help and who not to help—I just don't believe it... [I will tour the devastated area on Sunday] "for a president who cares deeply about what is going on in the Gulf region but can't be everywhere... I think everybody's very emotional. It's hard to watch pictures of any American going through this. And yes, the African-American community has obviously been very heavily affected."

Edith Thibodeaux (African-American evacuee from New Orleans) - "I don't think it was racist. They were just trying to save the area for the tourists. It's about how much money they can make in this city. They don't care about us."

To everything there is a season, a time to plant ...

Several years ago, the Clemson International Center for Automotive Research was founded on the idea that a partnership between industry and academia could be created that attracted world-class talent to both industry and the university. This pool of talent would attract a cluster of other related knowledge-based enterprises.

Initially, BMW and Michelin partnered with Clemson in ICAR. Professor Tom Kurfess has been named to the BMW Chair in Automotive Manufacturing and will serve as director of the Carroll A. Campbell Graduate Engineering Center, heading the Clemson-ICAR graduate program in automotive engineering.

This theory that attracting a preeminent scholar would attract other knowledge assets has now passed the test. Recently The Timken Company announced that it will locate research and development facilities at ICAR and bring up to 110 jobs to the S.C. Upstate over the next two years.

Timken has a long time relationship with Dr. Kurfess. Timken at ICAR "will allow Kurfess to continue a long-time research relationship with the company. He came to Clemson from Georgia Tech, where he worked closely with the Timken research and development team in Norcross, Ga., and in Canton, Ohio."

A lot of people have asked if ICAR would really work—if we could in fact build knowledge based cluster here. Timken's announcement demonstrates that in fact ICAR is working as planned.

And a time to pluck up that which is planted.

Liberty Corporation, a major company headquartered in Greenville, has been sold to Raycom and the headquarters will be consolidated in Alabama.

Corporate headquarters locations are crucial to a local community, and the loss of one as significant as Liberty hurts. There is a direct loss of high wage jobs related to the headquarters itself, and well as an indirect impact of local vendors that supported it, from attorneys and printers. There is also the loss of the community involvement by these folks, from their contributions to the United Way to their board membership in community organizations.

Liberty was founded and led by the Hipp Family. In addition to being outstanding business leaders, over the years members of the Hipp family have been tremendous community leaders and benefactors in the Greenville community. Here are just two recent examples of the civic contributions of the current CEO of Liberty Corporation, Hayne Hipp, and his wife, Anna Kate.

In recent years, there has been an incredible revitalization of downtown Greenville, which has become one of the coolest downtowns in America. Greenville is one of the only metropolitan areas with a water fall downtown, Reedy River Falls. To showcase the falls, Hayne and Anna Kate gave funds to build the Liberty Bridge, a pedestrian bridge which dramatically envelops the falls. While a lot of great momentum is building in Greenville, some of it will take decades to be fully realized and the Liberty Bridge has become a tangible symbol of the progress the community is making that people can appreciate today.

A couple of years ago, Hayne also create the Liberty Fellowship, designed to "to promote outstanding leadership in South Carolina, empowering the state and its future leaders to realize their full potential." Modeled on the Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellowship, each class of twenty Liberty Fellows attend four intense seminars over two years "to explore the values that sustain them; cultivate respect for both the ideas and beliefs of others; and become significant contributors to our state, and to society at large." Hayne was so encouraged by the success of the first class that he accelerated the selection of the second class.

To everything there is a season, with companies being bought and companies being sold. The community needs to appreciate the crucial impact that headquarters locations have, and we need to redouble out efforts to create high-impact companies that can become the major corporate headquarters locations here in the future. It’s vital to our economic health as a community.

Inez and the culture of innovation in education

First, before someone responds about this being overly political or an an attack on public education, take a deep breath ... it's neither. It's about how important it is to create a culture of innovation in education.

Brad Warthen, editorialist for The State, keeps a blog which I enjoy reading. We've had a conversation back and forth about a recent entry, "Inez shocker!", about her tenure as Secretary of Education in South Carolina.

Inez said she would not run for a third term, but would remain involved in "changing the culture of education in South Carolina, so people not only respect it but revere it."

To which I answered, "If Inez would focus her efforts on improving the culture inside public education so that it becomes a much more innovative system that develops creative solutions to meet the needs of children not well served today, then she would be doing a real service to the state."

Brad responded, "Mrs. Tenenbaum DID and CONTINUES to "focus her efforts on improving the culture inside public education so that it becomes a much more innovative system that develops creative solutions to meet the needs of children not well served today." That's why the public schools have improved steadily under her tenure, according to most objective measurements." Then Brad goes on, "And she's done it with grace in the face of constant partisan pettiness and outright malicious lies that have deliberately undermined public confidence in the fine job that teachers, administrators, students and parents have done in moving public education forward in South Carolina."

Sigh deeply. This unfortunately is the way this debate usually goes about how to improve public education goes. Our kids lose when little progress is made on reaching a consensus about fundamental changes necesary to improve the system of delivering education in the state.

Inez deserves credit for making the most of the existing system of delivering education. Test scores have improved in recent years as a result, and that is a very good thing. But she did very little to help create a culture of innovation inside public education, in fact she strongly resisted change along with the rest of the education establishment.

There is a wide spectrum of ways in which students think and learn. And there is a wide spectrum of circumstances from which children come. For some percentage of children, the way we deliver public education today matches up well with how they learn and the support they receive at home. Most of these children do well, and some even excel. But a very large percentage of children are not served well by the current system, and they are failing. The price we all pay for this is very high.

We need to find a way to give the best and brightest entrepreneurial teachers a way of creating now models for delivering education to students not well served today. Charter schools are a weak form of this, innovation lite. Some of the most innovative models may look very different from the way we deliver education today, and would never see the light of day if they had to take root inside or be approved by the existing system. This is not because anyone in education is bad, necessarily, if it just the way large organizations work. There is powerful momentum inside large organizations, be they companies or governments, to maintain the status quo and resist change. Harvard Professor Clayton Christensen wrote a very insightful book describing this, called The Innovator’s Dilemma. I also address this in my book, Swamp Fox Insights.

We can continue to make incremental improvements in education continuing on the path we are on. But we can’t make quantum leaps in improving education unless we create a system that allows entrepreneurial educators tp bring new ideas to underserved students. That’s going to take a strong political leader, like a Dick Riley, who can lead us to a much better place in education than we are today.

Something is stirring: we're at an inflection point

In the late 1990s, I began to sense that South Carolina was at an inflection point - needing to do different if we were going to continue to be globally competitive. The economic development model of branch manufacturing was running out of stream.

In 2000, I traveled across the state to talk with leaders about the need for a more innovative economy. I talked with Governor Hodges and ex-Governors, with CEOs, university leaders, economic developers, and newspaper editors.

Something was stirring. Shortly thereafter, Jim Barker called a meeting and asked if Clemson were in Greenville how our relationship would be different. George Fletcher continued the conversation, and ultimately the Clemson International Center for Automotive Research was born. Sam Tenenbaum was an early advocate of endowed research chairs, and Governor Hodges sent a small group of people, including me, to Austin to study their model. The SC Centers of Economic Excellence Act occurred shortly thereafter. Darla Moore, who had given tens of millions to the USC Moore Business School, created the Palmetto Institute to begin creating a strategic plan for the state. They engaged Michael Porter, whose advice to develop industry clusters has become orthodoxy. I began Swamp Fox and a series of conferences leading to InnoVenture which were grassroots efforts to build relationships among innovators and entrepreneurs.

We've seen some early experiments go away. The Upstate Coalition for Entrepreneurial Development recently declared victory in seeding several entrepreneurial activities and went out of business. A few other initiatives across the state, like the Supply Chain Coalition, have more quietly faded away.

But boom! Over the past four years, there has been a blooming of innovation in the state.

The early initiatives that gained traction are building momentum. SC BIO, the SC Centers of Excellence Review Board, and the USC Columbia Technology Incubator all report business is booming. The USC research campus is becoming a reality. The SC Health Sciences Initiative has built a coalition among USC, MUSC, Greenville Hospital and Palmetto Health Care. The SC Next Energy Initiative has been barnstorming the state. And InnoVenture has gained traction with major constituents who have gained a sense of ownership in the process.

Now something else is stirring. We’ve reached another inflection point. People across the state and across these initiatives are asking a similar question: how do we convert this activity into wealth creation in South Carolina. The Greenville Chamber is going on an intercity visit to Austin, TX, which in the late 1980s they had a supernova explosion – Dell Computer. When a company in your area creates several billion dollars in market value, and sprinkles some of that back into the local community into the next generation of companies, into the United Way and other community organizations, it alters the landscape of the community forever.

So how do we do that? Seed our Dell Computer that creates enormous wealth here. That is becoming a major focus here as we move forward.

InnoVenture's top-of-mind-position: Growth and Wealth Creation

Geoffrey A. Moore in Crossing the Chasm states that in marketing "there is one fundamental key to success: ...to create a space inside the customer's head called 'best buy for this type of situation' and to attain sole, undisputed occupancy of that space."

Clayton Christensen in The Innovator's Solution observes, "companies that target their products at the circumstances in which customers find themselves, rather than the customers themselves, are those that can launch predictably successful products. Put another way, the crucial unit of analysis is the circumstance and not the customer." He goes on, "A jobs-to-be-done lens can help innovators come to market with an initial product that is much closer to what customers will discover that they value. The way to get as close as possible to this target is to develop hypotheses by carefully observing what people seem to be trying to achieve for themselves," but are finding difficult, expensive, or inconvenient to do.

Hmmmm. So apply that to InnoVenture. Our target market is "innovators and entrepreneurs." What are they trying to achieve for themselves, that they are finding difficult, expensive or inconvenient to do.

Some innovators inside big organizations are trying to commercialize discontinuous innovations. Why would Michelin put any focus on the Tweel, when it is easier in the short term to sell more radial tires?

Entrepreneurs leading high-impact companies are also trying to gain traction commercializing discontinuous innovations. Certainly it would be much easier to have a real job with a stable salary and benefits. Why do entrepreneurs do it?

Innovators and entrepreneurs are driven to create growth and wealth. Michelin can make money on radial tires today, but the company can not meet its growth objectives with mature products. Entrepreneurs can't get rich working for someone else.

Innovators and entrepreneurs find their quest for growth and wealth creation really, really hard, so they begin to look for relationships, expertise, and resources that can help them. That is a job they that they will look to InnoVenture to do for them.

My book's on Amazon.com!

Swamp Fox Insights: Innovation and Entrepreneurship in a Time of Profound Change is now available at Amazon.com.

I've long respected the power of Amazon, but now I've realized the true impact in a personal way.

BookSurge in Charleston prints copies of the book on demand as orders are placed, so no huge investment in inventory is necessary. People anywhere in the world are a market for the book. A friend that lives life between New York and Japan bought the first copy online.

The fact that almost no one knows the book exists is another problem, but the distribution channel is in place. I've sold three books so far. Give me a call, and I'll buy lunch with the royalties :)

This isn't a path to riches, but it is still very awesome.

The explosive potential of broadband

The Greenville Chamber held a meeting Friday to discuss "Economic Development Issues Related To Broadband Communications."

The conversation began around the infrastructure that was in place - the amount, kind, and speed of broadband access that we had in the region. We realized that we had a strong broadband infrastructure, probably more than was generally understood and definitely more than was promoted.

The conversation turned to how broadband was being used to outsource work to India. One participant related how his wife, a solo architect, sought out draftsmen online that could convert her concepts into plans, so she could focus on the higher value added activity of bringing her clients' ideas to life in exciting architectural designs.

A Google search found draftsmen she could work with in Easley, SC and Bangalore, India. She contacted the draftsmen in Easley, who said she could submit her drawings online and could get something back in about a week. The Indian firm had several degreed engineers and said that she could submit her concepts in the evening and have drawings in her email in the morning. The Easley draftsmen don’t realize that the world has changed and the competition is not down the street but around the world. And we never even got to cost. In Thomas Friedman’s new vernacular, the folks in Easley don’t realize that The World is Flat.

Then the conversations turned again to the fact that the world is flat – in both directions. Broadband has opened up India as a market for us as much as us a market for them. Bits flow as easily from us to them as from them to us.

We need to explore the opportunities of this. We are at the beginning of a period where new, powerful business models are being created that leverage the powerful new communications technologies - eBay, and Amazon, and Dell Computer. Someone in the chamber discussion talked about his translation business which he runs from Greenville serving customers around the world. We challenged ourselves to begin to think about the opportunities that broadband creates to do business in expanded markets around the world.

The most encouraging part of the meeting is that when I left a small group of people had already gathered and were already starting to talk about what the next steps should be. Take an inventory of the broadband assets we have. Work this into the promotional materials for Greenville. Organize a forum to discuss the opportunities that exist …

This is what I really love about Greenville.

All of this is self-serving, John

It's great to have friends that respect you enough to give you feedback on how the world perceives your work, both the good and the bad.

I stopped by to visit with a marketing guru friend to discuss business opportunities around Swamp Fox, InnoVenture and related activities of mine. The most recent iteration of my journey started in 2000, when I realized that knowledge professionals in our region did not know one another. Swamp Fox: News of the Southeastern Innovation Corridor is a weekly email update to create awareness of innovations in the region. InnoVenture is an annual conference, along with forums throughout the year, to build relationships among knowledge professionals in companies, universities, tech colleges, high-impact companies, and support organizations. The Swamp Fox/InnoVenture database now has 6000 innovators and entrepreneurs.

My friend said I had a lot of fans across the state, especially for my persistence and tenacity over the years. That’s flattering. Some, though, get tired of the message, she said. After four years it is a challenge to keep the message fresh, as all preachers know. “Other people,” she said “think all of this is self-serving, John.”

The first meeting that led up to where we are was held in early 2001. I began that meeting, and I have included in many other meetings, a favorite Adam Smith quote, "It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."

We all participate in community activities out of our enlightened self-interest. If we will all get our self-interest out on the table, if you understand why I am here and I understand why you are here, then we can find the common ground where we can work together. Public goods will be created, but they are a byproduct of us working together in our enlightened, self-interest. If we pretend that we are all here only for the broader public good, then we just cloud the real reasons we're here and make it harder for us to work together effectively.

So to the charge, “All of this is self-serving, John,” I plead guilty. I’ve never been shy about explaining to anyone that asked what I expect to get out of this. In fact, I have been meeting with people across the state exploring ways to turn all this activity into a business and make money. You should be guilty of acting in your enlightened self-interest too. Please let me know what that is, because it will help us figure out how we can work together to make our community a better place.

Two hydrogen studies? Why none in advanced materials?

Are we playing together well?

Well not in trying to develop strength in what is supposed to be the hydrogen economy. There are two, independent research studies being completed of hydrogen opportunities.

Hydrogen is a big opportunity and we need to address it, especially given that we have the Savannah River National Lab, the NSF Center in Fuel Cells at USC, and the PEM Research Center at Clemson.

But let's not get carried away. Community leaders have recently said, "Most people would agree that hydrogen fuel cells/hydrogen energy represents the greatest opportunity to transform Columbia and S.C.'s economy."

Well, but ... we don’t know what the next fuel will be in coming decades, or how long the shift from hydrocarbons will take. South Carolina has hydrogen research assets, but we are also woefully behind in areas of commercialization that count, so even if hydrogen does win, we do not know if South Carolina can be more than a marginal player.

In the mean time, Michael Porter's recommendation's are that we ought to look first to the industry clusters where we have strength. There is more overlap in industry and academic research in South Carolina today in advanced materials, from the Clemson Advanced Materials Research Lab and the USC NanoCenter to the Michelin Americas Research Corporation and the Milliken Research Corporation, than there is in anything else.

Where isn’t there a study on advanced materials, including advanced textiles? Why don’t we have a major textile OEM stepping up and partnering to create the International Center for Textile Research to compliment the International Center for Automotive Research?

What industry clusters do you think we ought to develop a cluster around? What's in your enlightened self-interest. Leave your comment below.

Are we playing together well in South Carolina? What do you think?

All the rage in South Carolina is better collaboration. To make progress we need to get over the historical issues that keep us apart. The Lowcountry, the Midlands, the Pee Dee and the Upstate need to get along better. Clemson and USC need to keep their fighting to athletics. Blacks and whites need to work together better. Women need real opportunities at leadership.

Some days I’m excited that we're doing better than we ever have. We had an outstanding InnoVenture planning meeting a week ago.

Then I get slapped by the parochialism that has always held us back. The Greenville News reports that Cliff Rosen has sued BMW over Clemson ICAR. The State reports that some business leaders are getting frustrated with the Governor because they don’t think he works well with the legislature.

I’d really like to know what you think. Leave a comment below.

Are we really playing together well in South Carolina, or are we just giving it lip service?

What is important to us, until in an instant it is clear that it isn't.

A few weeks ago, I got a call out of the blue from my mother’s minister that she had become disoriented and confused at Vacation Bible School. Life came to a halt for a few days as we tried to figure out what to do. She's better now and has sold her house in Charleston and is moving to her home town of Anderson to be closer to relatives who can help take care of her. But it has been a challenge I had not anticipated and it hasn't been easy, for me or my mother.

A couple of friends recently have faced similar challenges in their lives.

I was in a planning meeting with a friend, who made an excellent presentation of a very significant part of the project. He had thrown a lot of his passion into his ideas, and it showed. No sooner had he finished than he received a cell phone call. The panicked look in his eyes said something was seriously wrong. "I gotta go! I gotta go! My wife has had a bike accident" It turned out that his wife had fallen off her bike crossing a train track and was knocked unconscious. Fortunately someone was there to call 911. She seems to be OK now, except for a few stitches and some bruises, but it was very scary.

Another friend missed the same meeting. I got a note afterward from him. He said, "I lost my assistant to a family emergency last week unexpectedly and that was the straw that broke the camel's back regarding my attendance at the meeting. I'm having to spend every spare hour (that I'm not in the office) helping with my Mom who is rehabilitating in a facility here in town. We hope to have her back home in less than two weeks. That continuous struggle combined with the lack of support from my assistant forced me to work in the office. I hate I missed the meeting." I responded, "I understand about your mom. I've been there. At the end of the day, that's what's important." He replied, "You're right. That is what it’s all about but it is draining the energy from me. I am so pumped about where things are with my work and where they are heading but sometimes the whole "parenting my parents" routine just saps the very life from me. Anyway, I'm learning to juggle it a little better every day." Aren’t we all … learning to juggle it a little better every day. None of us is in nearly the control of our lives that we like to believe. throw our passion into big ideas for the future. That work is important to our businesses and to our communities. It seems to be at the very core of who we are and what is important to us, until in an instant it is clear that it isn’t.