Where from here?

So what to do with these insights? I submit we need to leverage what we know to make our nation, state, and city more competitive. But let’s start small – what can we do with Tulsa?

First, if I had my druthers, I’d host a dinner party with Eric Ries and Cesar Hidalgo, and maybe invite a few others like Malcolm Gladwell and Angela Duckworth. Cesar could provide insight on how to analyze Tulsa’s current capabilities and create a vision, Eric could provide the insight into small bets and experiments, Malcolm could help us connect and tip it over, and Angela could give us determination. With a team like that, how could we lose? Anybody up for arranging this for me, please?

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First let’s agree on what we want to do: I’d say we get Tulsa out of the doldrums and on a path for clear competitive differentiation, and even strive for disruptive success, compared to its peers on the US and world stages. I want to see:

- Growing high-tech and high-value employment for a sustainable white-collar workforce, including self-employed contractors and start-ups

- Intentional development of a strategically valuable skill base that provides long-term advantage

- A solid employment base for blue-collar workers, including trades and craftsmen, with a viable path through the coming AI/robotics/automation revolution

- Expansion of a solid local tax base for great schools, strong public infrastructure, and vibrant communities

- Solid opportunities for students, artists, and entrepreneurs of various sorts

Does anybody have better goals? Other ways of stating them?

Probably we should also be clear on the current state of our city, complete with weaknesses and shortcomings, and we saw early on that it’s the gap between current reality and future vision than helps generate creative energy. From there, I envision an intentional plan with clear progress metrics, yielding an approach that starts strong and gains momentum from there.

Some will say that all cities want something like this, and I would agree; however, most of them don’t have a pragmatic and reasonable plan. Most have some good ideas, some idealistic notions, some idiotic but well-funded concepts, and a bunch of tax dollars chasing the latest big company that dangles jobs. To me, this seems like a recipe for a haphazard drunkard’s-walk toward success, and it just doesn’t seem all that difficult to have a better focus and expect better results. This would be especially true if we do it based on the concepts I’ve discussed earlier here, leveraging these and other similar ideas and research by really smart people. We don’t have to be brilliant: we just need to listen and think like entrepreneurs, and work together to push in more or less the same direction.