Building a Launching Pad
May 10, 2013 Leave a comment
The Innovation Economy Expo in Ontario seeks to put people with ideas in touch with the investors who can back them
BY JACK KATZANEK | STAFF WRITER | May 10, 2013
Success in business is based largely on whom you know and how you react to the people around you, all of which has to start somewhere.
One of those launching pads could have been at the Ontario Convention Center on Thursday, May 9, at the first Innovation Economy Expo, an event designed to put people with good business ideas on the track to success and, more importantly, put some of those success-starved men and women in the same room with the entrepreneurs who can make it happen.
The event was hosted by Innovation Economy Konnect, a company started about a year ago to bring together various stakeholders in Southern California with a goal of increasing economic development. Several hundred people attended the all-day event. One of them was James Coats, a 29-year-old freelance Web designer, graphics artist and photographer who attended Cal Poly Pomona and will soon enroll in Cal State San Bernardino’s entrepreneurship program. In his short career, he’s worked for Riverside Community College District and at telecom giant AT&T.
But Thursday, he was doing what a young freelancer has to do: He was working the room, going from booth to booth and networking.
“I want to see how technology shapes marketing and advertising in the future,” Coats said. “But for now, I have to build a base and that takes time.”
A few tables away, Bruce Coleman, economic development director for Murrieta, was having a conversation with three men who represented a group called the Korean Innovation and Investment Cluster, part of an organization whose goal is to facilitate trade between South Korea and the United States. The organization gets interested in communities that are encouraging technology development, something Murrieta and other Inland Southern California cities are doing.
James Lee, director of the Korean group, said his country has free-trade advantages with the United States that other countries do not have, and American interests should be aware of the potential rewards of doing business globally, he said.
“We have to be connected to the world on every level,” Lee said.
But for many the first level of successful entrepreneurship is personal, and a panel of business people who have gone that route before discussed how relationships, both inside and outside the company, are vital to putting together a formula that works.
Bill Stierle, the founder of Corporate Culture Development, a Southern California-based consulting firm that specializes in executive coaching and the moderator of the panel, held up colored index cards and used them to illustrate four major players within a company, among them a CEO, a human resources director and a marketing chief.
They can be different and yet have complementary strengths, and it’s important that the right people are used to solve problems.
“Sometimes Batman has to come to Superman’s rescue, but I don’t want to have Batman do Superman’s job,” Stierle said. “It’s different men, different powers.”
Virginia Green, growth manager for California Manufacturing Technology Consulting, said that customers tend to look for ethical companies, and that starts with CEO, even if that person does not make sales calls and has little contact with customers. The trust factor should resonate from the executive suite.
“It comes from the top down,” Green said. “If the leader is an ethical, open and communicative leader you want to follow, the customer will notice those ethics.”
