Economic development event urges Kansas City investors to take risks

The annual celebration of economic development accomplished by the Kansas City Area Development Council this year turned the tables on the audience.

About 1,500 people at the Kansas City Convention Center on Friday saw an invigorating video about the area’s vibrancy, heard exuberant references to the Kansas City Royals and congratulated the council’s outgoing CEO, Bob Marcusse, for his 25 years of leadership in attracting jobs to the metro area.

But the event’s keynote speaker, Ron LeMay, dug beneath boosterism to charge the audience with responsibility to make the area more competitive, to foster innovation and entrepreneurship. Those are, he said, the keys to “enduringly successful” growth.

In plain talk laced with references to cuss words not ordinarily heard in such civic venues, the former AT&T and Sprint executive said Kansas City’s “warm, embracing culture” isn’t enough to spark growth.

LeMay, now CEO of FarmLink and active in equity investments in startups, projected on the giant screen a bar graph showing that Kansas City trailed 12 peer cities in employment growth since the recession. Despite many recent accolades, he said the area needs “to face the reality that we’re not improving at the rate of some of our peers.”

LeMay said the area had failed to connect startup entrepreneurs with available capital. He said it’s a great misconception that there is no available investment capital in the area or that there are no good ideas worth investment.

“We need to exercise a collective will (and) create a culture with a different attitude toward risk taking,” he said, exhorting “old farts” in the room to get involved in nurturing growth companies instead of retiring from the business scene. “We’re perceived as a risk-averse culture. We have to change that. We have to support early-stage companies.”

He said that means willingness to accept failure.

In his final remarks as the development council’s top executive, Marcusse sounded a more positive vibe, noting 26 companies and 2,789 jobs came to the Kansas City area in the past year because of job attraction efforts by the organization.

But Marcusse also emphasized the need for everyone to help market the area to the talent needed by growing enterprises. That means recruiting from elsewhere and growing from within through education alliances.

“Thousands of jobs are available in Kansas City. We just need to find the right people,” he said, introducing Chute KC, a new talent recruitment, Web-based program sponsored by KCnext under the umbrella of the development council.

Luncheon co-chairman John Murphy, chairman of Shook, Hardy & Bacon and a member of the council board, thanked Marcusse for building strong groundwork for the development organization to continue. He said the council board expects to consider a candidate to succeed Marcusse at its next meeting.

This story was originally published November 6, 2015 at 2:57 PM with the headline "Economic development event urges Kansas City investors to take risks."