Others noted a communications gap that too often hinders effective leadership in the community. Christine Kemper told the story of a trip to Omaha involving
Joni Cobb, head of the Pipeline entrepreneurship program. When business leaders there told her about an entrepreneurship-promotion initiative they were involved with, in conjunction with the Kansas City Chamber of Commerce, “Joni was flabbergasted, because how would she not know about this in her own town?” Kemper asked. “Sometimes I think there’s a lot of energy, but we have to get it focused so that all the right people are talking to each other and not running 300 miles up the road to find out what’s happening in our own community.”

Tom Proebstle of Generator Studio, the architectural and design firm, cited similar concerns. “One great positive for us is the Crossroads right now; I think we have something like 50 or 55 digital Web companies or digital media companies, and I think it’s second only to Austin, Texas. That’s a great thing, but who knows that?” That matters, he said, when talented students graduate from college and look for the place to start their careers. “If I’m a kid in Silicon Valley, and I’m making the call—‘Where do I move to? Where should I set up shop?’—who do they call? Where do they go? Does anybody have an answer for that?”

Joe Sweeney of Ingram’s, moderating the discussion, noted the relative lack of nationally known brands based in Kansas City. A recent trip through Silicon Valley showed evidence of that community’s ability to draw or grow big-name brands. “We need to start thinking more about the perception, our position in the marketplace, and think more about what that region of northern California has done to attract investment,” he said.

Challenges

Identifying shortcomings is a key step in identifying challenges and setting priorities for overcoming them, and panelists readily addressed some. Stremming, who noted the impact of major philanthropists whose wealth was generated by business growth, posed a key question. “You start to think about who’s next? We can only rely on those families for so long.”

Kramer seized on that, as well, from a different perspective. “When you think about who’s next, what entrepreneurial companies are going to take the place of the Cerners and some of the others, I start to think about who’s next at those companies, those patriarch companies,” he said. While there are great chief executives in place around the region, he asked, will their stockholders and boards future executives maintain current investments in the community? “All of us know that spending time and dollars on community events builds a better community for
your employees to work in,” Kramer said, “but it’s hard to translate that dollar for dollar into a company’s bottom line.”

Peter Brown suggested that a significant challenge is a mental one: Embracing the need for continued growth. “We seem to have a mentality, that we’ll get to a certain size and we’ll sell out; we don’t build bigger, bigger, bigger, bigger,” he said. “But we can think bigger. We can be the acquirer instead of the acquiree.” That’s not a tangent to the conversation; without that kind of mega-growth of companies, there won’t be a future Hallmark or American Century. “We’ve got to plant those seeds to start the next generation of businesses that will be tomorrow’s corporate oaks,” he said.

For Courtney Kounkel, also a Centric Projects co-founder, a looming challenge is retaining top talent and drawing students back to this region after college out of state. Her own story was a good example of that; she was certain when she left Kansas City for college that she was cutting a cord. Not so. The cost-effectiveness, the competitive salaries, the strong suburban and private schools are powerful magnets that brought her back, she said, but there’s still a problem: “People leave; there has to be some reason to bring them back,” she said.