There’s a fluffy article in Newsweek this week titled “Why the Great Plains are Great Once Again“. I’ve got a lot of family in North Dakota, so I always read these things, even if I know the answer is they’ve got a lot of energy resources. (With oil at $70-something a barrel, North Dakota doesn’t have much trouble balancing its budget. )
One of the great success stories of North Dakota is Great Plains Software, which has been a unit of Microsoft for about a decade. (My grandparents like to tell me all about it, I think secretly hoping that I’ll want to work there and live nearby after graduate school.) Sure enough, the article mentions Great Plains:
Nowhere is this potential clearer than in Fargo, which is emerging as a high-tech hub. Doug Burgum, from nearby Arthur, N.D., founded Great Plains Software in the mid-1980s. Burgum says he saw potential in the engineering grads pumped out by North Dakota State University, many of whom worked in Fargo’s large and expanding specialty-farm-equipment industry. “My business strategy is to be close to the source of supply,” says Burgum. “North Dakota gave us access to the raw material of college students.
Microsoft bought Great Plains for a reported $1.1 billion in 2001, establishing Fargo as the headquarters for its business-systems division, which now employs more than 1,000 workers.”
Sounds like the Madison area and Epic, right? Almost. The next bit of the article:
The tech boom started by Burgum has spawned both startups and spin-offs in everything from information technology to biomedicine. Science and engineering employment statewide has grown by 31 percent since 2002, the highest rate of any state.
That’s the odd thing about Epic – where are the spin-offs? We don’t read in “In Business” magazine about a company founded by “three former Epic employees” as often as we should. I’m prepared to be wrong on this, but I can’t think of a single venture formed by former Epic employees.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m thankful that we’ve got Epic in the area. I’ve got a lot of friends that work there, and they’ve been generous supporters of the community and my department. But they strike me as an untapped resource for economic development: we need to convince a few people to leave Epic.
New ventures are established in areas where there is a sense of opportunity and action; an area with new ventures tends to breed other new ventures. Similarly, new ventures are launched in areas with established players. Paul Graham, a pretty well-known technology entrepreneur, observes that part of the reason Seattle or San Francisco is so successful in developing new companies is that they have many options for startups to recruit from, and for people to return to if the venture fails. This workforce mobility is central to economic development, especially with Madison’s generally low unemployment rate.
Madison has much of what is necessary to encourage this sort of activity (read this piece by Graham and ask yourself “is he talking about Madison?”) but as agents of economic development we can be doing more in this area. The city or some other group (Thrive seems appropriate) can work harder to encourage entrepreneurship in our workforce. For example, short, low-cost, high-quality professional development events, perhaps at lunchtime or in the early evening and near major employment centers could get people in the door to learn some new technology or skill, and (with some subtle crafting of the message) thinking about venturing beyond what they are currently doing.
Dane County and other regional leadership need to fully engage area employers in this effort. It must not be viewed as an attempt to “raid” them for their best employees. It is imperative that the political leadership impress upon area employers that hiring entrepreneurs is vital to both the region and to their companies. Even with a highly entrepreneurial workforce, most will stay with the company for a long time and not immediately venture out on their own. However, a highly entrepreneurial workforce is far more likely to be internally innovative and productive for the company. Similarly, explicitly valuing a culture of entrepreneurship will make it easier to recruit workers to the area who might otherwise pass on Dane County precisely because there isn’t enough going on in our area. Increasing our diversity of viewpoint ensures that we maximize our talent pool.
So, if you’re reading this out at Epic – think about quitting. Get a couple of your smart friends together, and strike out on your own. Leave on good terms, so if it doesn’t work out, you can go back to Epic. Some of you will make it big, some of you won’t. You’re part of how we’ll grow, and we need you to take a shot.
Problem, as I see it, is that the workforce at Epic is primarily very young and very specialized. Employees rolling out of Epic are likely to have been VB6 + Cache/MUMPS EMR developer for their entire careers thus far. I would imagine that it’s hard to come up with new ideas for startups if your experience is limited to one way of doing things.
I’ve heard other opinions regarding code quality, UX design, development methodologies etc regarding Epic, but I can’t directly substantiate them beyond what I’ve seen in my doctor’s office. But if those rumours are true, that would be another potential reason spinoffs are not forthcoming.
I’ve always wondered that myself. There’s a lot of smart people there, but the company has only started to grow recently. It takes time to get a successful spin-off running. We’ll find out in 5 years I suppose.