Ohio Governor Ted Strickland, National Business Executives Share Best Practices At TechColumbus Innovation Summit
May 17, 2009
ShareThisOhio Governor Ted Strickland called for the renewal and expansion of Ohio’s Third Frontier program during remarks today at the TechColumbus Innovation Summit. Strickland discussed Third Frontier, which is credited with creating more than 7,700 Ohio jobs and leveraging $3.5 billion in private and federal funding since its inception in 2005.
The event attracted more than 175 chief executives from prominent companies and organizations around the Midwest. The Summit was developed to provide an opportunity for innovative leaders to share best practices and catalyze creative thinking in various tech sectors.
Strickland discussed the link between the state’s education reform plan and Ohio’s future economic growth, emphasizing that for businesses to succeed they need a qualified, skilled innovative workforce. Strickland’s plan calls for funding more educational research, bringing more technological capabilities to the classroom, requiring high school students to take the ACT and end-of-course exams, and completing a major senior project and a service learning program , among other things. He said without this reform, Ohio will continue to fall behind.
“Building on Ohio’s rich history of innovation and creativity will ensure the state’s future economic growth and success,” Strickland said. “Our education reform plan will modernize Ohio’s classrooms to better prepare our students for the jobs of the future. An education system grounded in innovation, critical thinking, and technology skills ensures that we have a 21st Century workforce to attract business growth and development.”
The Governor’s message set the tone for the day, as many of the speakers discussed the need for significant, but practical changes in the way the business community approaches innovation. Speakers, included Terry Jones, founder of Travelocity.com and chairman of the board at Kayak.com; Bryan Pearce, director of the venture capital group at Ernst & Young LLP, and Rita McGrath, faculty member at Columbia Business School.
Jones provided advice to leaders on how innovation can lead to success, specifically citing examples from his past experiences at Travelocity, where he led the company until 2002, and now Kayak, the world’s largest travel search site, where he helps define the company’s plan for growth.
Jones said one of the reasons for his success is because he learned quickly during the early dot-com days how to take a buyer/seller connection and turn it into a relationship between a person and a computer. Today, 150 million travelers search for bookings online because of this innovative way of thinking.
“Today, customers want speed and convenience,” he said. “The Internet is the key to this relationship.”
McGrath’s speech took innovation to the next level, focusing on how to survive in challenging times. She said traditional approaches to strategy and innovation no longer work in massively uncertain and volatile environments. She offered a practical methodology for creating a mindset for innovation and a framework for indentifying transformative growth opportunities.
“With a ‘discovery driven’ approach, instead you focus on discovering rather than analyzing, converting assumptions to knowledge at low cost, and investing just to the bounds of your knowledge,” says McGrath. “The good news is that if you deploy these new disciplines you can pursue innovation without increasing your risk profile.”
Pina Patel, president of Evonence, a six-month-old Columbus information technology company providing consulting services to the medium- and small-business market, said he gained valuable knowledge from the Innovation Summit.
“It’s important I gain this knowledge so I can be a successful innovator for future growth of my company,” said Patel. “By taking these processes and models learned here today, I can take them back to my company so we can be more innovative in what we do.”
The presenting sponsor for the TechColumbus Innovation Summit is Sterling Commerce. Other sponsors include Battelle and Bricker & Eckler. For more information about today’s event, please visit www.techcolumbusinnovationsummit.com/.