The rising tide of innovation raises all our boats By Scott Meacham Our state is proactively seeking new ways to boost scalable entrepreneurship. One sure path is to increase innovation. Innovation is a long game. The path begins with educating more young people in STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math). For 30 years, that’s beenRead more
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By Scott Meacham Paycom has mastered the art of corporate innovation Corporate innovation is easy to talk about and difficult to achieve — especially as innovative young companies succeed and grow. If ever there was a U.S. company that has mastered the art of corporate innovation, it is Paycom. This Oklahoma company started as oneRead more
By Scott Meacham Let’s raise our eyes and raise our goals Oklahoma. Christian Kanady is a fourth-generation Oklahoman. “My roots don’t touch any state besides this one,” he said. “Like most Oklahomans, I grew up steeped in this state’s sense of being both an underdog and a pioneer.” These days, Kanady is channeling that pioneeringRead more
By Scott Meacham Since its creation in the late 1990s, i2E has had an exponential impact upon the state’s startup economy. Which came first, the chicken or the egg? This philosophical trope has been used from ancient times on down as a frame to debate cause and effect. In high tech entrepreneurship and venture capital,Read more
By Scott Meacham Charles Machine Works is a case study in entrepreneurship and innovation. To succeed in entrepreneurship, solve a problem that lots of businesses have. You can be even more successful, if the business you are solving that big problem for is in an industry that is about to take off. That’s the OklahomaRead more
By Scott Meacham Happy New Year! I don’t know if I have ever been so happy to end one year and begin the next. Times remain challenging, but in just the last few weeks, we finally have cause to celebrate. We have a reason to hope that the vaccines that are rolling out will tameRead more
By Scott Meacham I am approaching the end of this year with a sense of relief and hope for a better year next year. Like many of us, I can say sincerely that I have never been through anything like this year with a pandemic, an ice storm (including a branch through the roof ofRead more
By Scott Meacham It’s official. The country is in a recession. Of course, we didn’t need the recent announcement by the National Bureau of Economic Research to tell us that. Given its unusualness, our hope is that we have nearly bottomed out from the pandemic free-fall and that economic recovery will come quickly. However, weRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2018, The Oklahoma Publishing Co. Innovation drives everything. Without innovation, we wouldn’t have entrepreneurs, startup companies, or job and wealth creation. And we wouldn’t have shopping carts. Sylvan Goldman, the Oklahoma grocer who in 1937 invented the shopping cart, had a business problem that was keeping him from increasing whatRead more
Sometime back, a doctor who was also an inventor, mentioned that the next time I visited a hospital I should be on the lookout for rubber bands and paper clips. Not in the administrative areas, he said, but attached in some way to pieces of high tech equipment.
As a lifelong Oklahoman, I have lived through a number of booms and busts driven by the price of oil and gas. In Oklahoma, when we hear that oil is at a 12-year low, that is not a good sign. Since our state is so dependent on the energy sector, low energy prices are particularly bad news for our economy and for our state budget. Not surprisingly, in times like this people start pointing fingers at state economic policy.
Innovation has a long history in Oklahoma business By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2015, The Oklahoma Publishing Company As a kid growing up in rural Oklahoma, one of the highlights of my young life was getting to go to “the City” and see my grandparents. Of course my brother and I enjoyed being spoiled byRead more
Finding a new name for innovation in Oklahoma City By i2E Vice Chair Stephen Prescott Copyright © 2015 The Oklahoma Publishing Co. What’s in a name? That’s what I thought as I sat with more than 200 others at the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce retreat earlier this month. We had gathered for a daylongRead more
Vision proposal aims at Tulsa being the next Silicon Valley By Jarrel Wade Copyright © 2015 BH Media Group Holdings, Inc. The next industrial revolution is called the “maker movement,” and Scott Phillips, founder of Civic Ninjas, wants Tulsa to be ahead of everyone. On Tuesday, Phillips plans to pitch his proposal for Vision 2025 renewalRead more
For Oklahoma to fully compete in this century’s innovation economy, we all need to get on the same page and commit to a cohesive strategy to grow advanced industries in our state.
The “2014 State New Economy Index,” a study based on 25 key indicators produced by the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, ranks Oklahoma 48th of the 50 states in innovation.
We have to feed the innovation machine with science and invention on the front end to produce a constant stream of job-creating innovative businesses.
I’ve never seen any stats on this, but I imagine that football players might make pretty good entrepreneurs, because there are so many similarities between the game and entrepreneurship.
