Pittsburgh a Tech Town?

Can Pittsburgh Pennsylvania finally recover from the demise of the steel mills and the recession of the 1980’s? While other parts of the country have recovered and adapted to the New Economy Pittsburgh is still a laggard. Local politicians like to tout the region as making the transition from a steel town to a tech town but it really hasn’t happened. Here’s a report from 1998:

TECH TRANSFORMATION


Much of this is still true today. The University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University produce a lot of talented graduates every year, but few are able to stay in Pittsburgh. An entrepreneurial infrastructure has yet to exist. I found this really good article that gives the straight dope on making a startup company:

How To Start A Startup

I think it’s interesting to note that the author points out that there are only 3 places in the U.S. that are good for startups:

“If I were going to start a startup today, there are only three places I'd consider doing it: on the Red Line near Central, Harvard, or Davis Squares (Kendall is too sterile); in Palo Alto on University or California Aves; and in Berkeley immediately north or south of campus. These are the only places I know that have the right kind of vibe.”

I highly recommend reading this article of you are considering starting a business.

What are they doing right? Maybe Pittsburgh should try to copy that.

In any case, here is a link to the article that I read that prompted this post:

Google coming because local talent likes it here

Could it be that Pittsburgh is finally turning things around? Or will these new efforts go the way of the Pittsburgh Digital Greenhouse and Lycos?

Distributed, Collaborative Development - NOW!

Companies that aren't managing IT projects using distributed, collaborative development are behind the times. The open-source methodology for developing software has proven itself as highly successful. Why do so many companies still require their programmers to be on-site? Open-source projects (ex. Mozilla) are managed and coded by people who have never met and they work very well. When are software companies going to get the message? The technology exists, it just appears as though management doesn't know how to wield it. So, managers, if you don't know how to manage a team of developers that is geographically distributed around the world now is the time to learn.

Get An MBI To Thrive In The New Economy

Lately I have been thinking that to survive in today's business environment you need to know how to get into a business and get out in a short timeframe OR be able to innovate and/or change the direction or core competency of your business in an instant. In the blink of an eye you've got a whole world of competitors who were able to copy your technology, drive prices down and take market share from you. But now I don't think that avoiding technology is the answer. The answer is to be able to get something up and running, get your money back quickly, and have an exit strategy. Secondly, if you're not keen on opening and closing up shop all the time and instead want to operate under the same company name then you need to learn to be innovative and agile. To do this you need to have several projects brewing all the time, have your finger firmly on the pulse of market trends, and be able to reconfigure and retool FAST.

I came across an article by Jim Carroll called The Masters of Business Imagination Manifesto that seems to hit on this concept. I showed this to a friend of mine who is a Carnegie Mellon MBA graduate. He said he already read about what Carroll is talking about in a book calledRenewable Advantage : Crafting Strategy Through Economic Time by Jeffrey R. Williams. My friend, Art, highly recommends it and says I really need to read it. Maybe I'll get it for myself for Christamas.

Big Changes

I have decided make the blog the primary focus of the website. This will allow me to keep the content more current and ease the editing process of the website. If you are a regular visitor you will notice things changing on a regular basis for a while as I tweak things to perfection.