Greetings and salutations fellow members of the innovation, entrepreneur and capital society.
I was going through my schedule last night for the next several months and there are a lot of upcoming programs/initiatives; I mean a lot. This led me to think .... "Do we have too many innovation focused, entrepreneur, trade associations, lobbying, and venture capital support organizations? Would less be more, and is more...well, less?"
I read recently where AeA is in talks to merge with ITAA (article). And I thought, good for them! That makes a lot of sense. There is power in scale, consolidation and a common voice, particularly for advocacy issues, purchasing and the other trade groups. (As a note at OCTANe, we decided not to focus in this area (we partner instead!) and focus on pure company development; the ONLY full-time model in OC/So Cal laser focused on this!)
Some people think consolidation is a bad thing; I am not so sure. Having scale, focus and working together to "move the needle" is what innovation support groups should be about. Right? Having less money spent on admin/hotels and more helping to create, grow, support, staff and fund innovative companies should be the goal for any business support organization. Shouldn't it?
Is there harm in having a plethora of volunteer or other business support groups? Probably not. But imagine if there were a few strong ones working more together (more partnering) and applying resources to solve (not just report on) our innovation economy problems; this is what is needed.
Additionally, there is an inherent urge for a successful support association to expand (I get asked all the time why not do OCTANe in LA or SD or AZ or Guam). This is the easy/overhead route. What is hard (and needed) is for organizations to continually innovate (yes non-profit business groups should innovate themselves) and focus on developing local IP driven companies and jobs ...minds and money are our future economic drivers here in Orange County.
We are in unprecedented economic and financial times here in the US. We have some serious issues but developing and growing innovative companies and high paying jobs needs to be one of them!!!!!! We must develop a robust, efficient, RESULTS ORIENTED local/national innovation ecosystem to help grow our regions and industries.
So how does everyone think we are doing?
PS: I'm not alone in my thoughts...check out a recent LA Times blog that shares my views.
2 comments:
We prefer to be called "little people." God knows how they'll refer to me once I become Snow White.
Don "Grumpy" Hicks
Gary, two thoughts:
First, all of these small help / advisory groups eventually discover they can't make any money helping start-ups. So, they either die off or they they abandon their start-up roots in favor of paying sponsors (lawfirms, accounting firms, etc). Then, a new set of well meaning folks jumps in to serve what is a clear (but non-paying) need and the cycle repeats.
Second, I continue to see all the hoopla about the amount of investing in Southern California. I recently wrote a blog looking under the numbers www.mvmpartners.com/blog and there is a very disturbing trend: first, the money is NOT coming from local VCs and second, it is not being invested in seed or start up companies. I believe we have a real crisis shaping up in Southern California as the earliest stage companies have a hard time finding good advice and a very very hard time finding supportive VCs.
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