My evidence?

- Maker’s Faire. Coming to Kansas City, June 25 and 26, at Union Station. Organizers are expecting 100-200 participants, a good start. I’ve written before about the power of makers, the honor of the craftsperson, and the attractiveness of the maker movement. Now it’s becoming a respected and valid entry to entrepreneurship. And it’s bubbling in Kansas City. This nascent movement combines innovation, creativity and a little bit of anti-establishment attitude in focusing on making rather than consuming.

- Forbes magazine identifies Kansas City as 5th of the nation’s 50 largest cities in terms of the growth rate of college-educated adults, making Kansas City one of the top “brain magnets” in the country.  Here’s what Forbes said:

The two-state Kansas City region boasts strong population growth and net in-migration– and for good reason. The city has one of the lowest costs of living, one of the highest personal-income growth rates and one of the healthiest real estate markets in the country. Short commute times also add to the attractiveness of the city for families. The city is the second-largest rail hub in the U.S. and is actively growing its life science and technology sectors. Kansas City gained 38,398 graduates from 2007 to 2009, or 2.96 percent of its 25-and-older population.

- Life Sciences and KC Animal Corridor. This is perhaps the most tangible of the signs. Rising from the loss of Marion Merrill Dow, dozens of smart Kansas Citians chose to stay and build upon their expertise and passion. They could’ve left to take jobs on the East or West coasts, or gone to rebuild from there. But they planted roots here, and now those roots are flourishing. Now, I don’t want to see any of our other large corporations move out, but even if they did (thinking of the perennial Sprint rumors, for example), I now believe the same could happen again.

- Blossoming arts scene. Kauffman Center for Performing Arts, the Nelson-Atkins, the Kansas City Art Institute, the arts incubator, the Crossroads, and loads of additional artist/entrepreneurs are changing the vibes in this town.  There was a small performance last week, “A Gaelic Revival,” held at the Irish Center in Union Station.  A handful of equity actors, including some of the best in Kansas City, performed scenes from “Playboy of the Western World,” “The Plough and the Stars” and “Kathleen nee Houlihan” for an enthralled audience of about 50.  Multiply this by the dozens of events every weekend, heck, every day, and you understand what a gifted arts community we have.

- Final perspective: Six qualified and capable candidates are running for mayor. Local pundits have already noted that the city can hardly go wrong with this roster.  Even discounting that all candidates speak in glowing terms about the city’s potential, this time … it feels like most of them really mean it.  I’d like to see the next mayor embrace collaboration and build on this newly emerging power.

So, to all those HR recruiters and corporate executives who still believe that the best come from somewhere else — think again. Look here first.

BATS stands for Better Alternative Trading System. It’s a registered securities exchange that started up about 4 1/2 years ago in Lenexa, a Kansas City area suburb. The exchange competes directly with the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) and Nasdaq (which used to be an acronym that used to stand for National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotation).

BATS was founded to increase competition in the market. It’s succeeded. BATS is the third-largest exchange in the world. BATS now accounts for about 10 to 11 percent of the trading volume, while the Giant NYSE has about 11 to 12 percent.

All from a humble Midwestern location — NOT Wall Street.

Ratterman, soft-spoken and precise, carefully laid out the company’s amazing story:

• Speed is the differentiator. Trades are executed in millionths of a second, incomprehensible speeds. The human eye can register a 250,000/1,000,000th of a second, these trades occur faster than that, he said.
• Customers are broker/dealers, and include all the big names: Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sach, Credit Suisse, eTrade, Deutche Bank, etc.
• BATS is on a path to achieve 18 to 20 percent market share in the next several years.

He gave an overview of the company strategy (Go big or go home), investment approach (Venture capital? No thanks), marketing approach (big customers are equity partners who draw other big customers), and growth opportunities (options market, Europe, maybe Asia).

Then he spoke about their hiring strategy, and I nearly fell out of my chair.

“We never recruit outside Kansas City,” he said.

An extraordinarily successful company that willfully, purposefully, hires only local talent?

I’ve lived here for about 25 years, and that’s the first time I’d ever heard a CEO or any corporate executive break with the conventional wisdom: The best talent comes from the coasts, you can’t get smart people here. I can’t tell you how many smart people believe that you just can’t get smart people to live in the Midwest, and how many others believe that to be successful, you have be in the center of action — Silicon Valley for technology innovation, New York for marketing, Wall Street for finance.

BATS slayed that convention. Ratterman gave some insight to the company’s hiring approach:

• Hires have to fit with the company’s ethic and, first and foremost, be willing to do the right thing.
• The company looks for “deep discipline”, deep expertise in the selected field, whether it’s accounting or hardware or communication.
• Passion for the markets is required. An example: a software engineer makes a point of reading SEC filings and competitors’ press releases. Not for his job, but for his passion. He cares about the markets and wants to know everything he can.
• The hiring process is strenuous and can take up to 15 interviews. And every interviewer, from the receptionist to the hiring manager, peers, and leadership has to give an unqualified two thumbs up on a candidate before they’ll hire. Any hesitation from any one, and they’ll pass. “We spend a lot of time not hiring the wrong people,” Ratterman said.

The process pays off. Ratterman notes that all of the original 13 employees are still there.

“The best and brightest like to be around the best and brightest,” he noted. “The people who are here like to stay here.”

Ratterman said BATS has brought in some employees who had a compelling reason, a need, to be here, and he admits they’ll entertain a candidate who wants to be here. But they don’t seek them out.

A lesson might be: You can find good talent, if you’re willing to look for it. Note that it’s not just hiring a recruiter with East or West Coast connections — you have invest the time to be sure that your next hire is the right one.  Like the BATS approach.

A second lesson might be a bit more subtle. Candidates have got to WANT to work at BATS to get in there. They’re not hiring just for a “job,” they’re hiring for the long term, for those who can help the BATS team — already at the top of their game — go on to the next level. Depth of knowledge, passion for the business, willingness to do the right thing wins out.

BATS is proving that it pays off to be unconventional, in more ways that one.

I heard a too-brief presentation recently from Bob Johansen, a distinguished fellow at the Institute for the Future. First off, he described his task as a futurist: to offer a plausible forecast in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous world. VUCO world, for short.

Then he offered a secret on how he does his job: Start by looking farther out ahead, and then work your way back to the near-future. He said things are much clearer farther out, say 20 years in the future, and much harder to specify one to three years in the future. Besides, he says his role as a forecaster is not to predict, but to provoke.

He described several future scenarios that appear certain to him — for example, connectedness will increase in importance, as wireless communications melds with sensors connected to everything. He gave a convincing argument by showing how Helsinki and Tokyo are using the combination today: you can use a cell phone to scan bar codes on products on grocery shelves, and you’ll get a read-out of consumer ratings on the product. You pick your shampoo based on its environmental, health or societal rating, whatever matters most to you.

The best sound bite of his talk (in my view) was his proclamation: The word “consumer” is obsolete. It’s almost an insult to be called a consumer.

Every person is connected in a social network, and technology has amplified those networks. It’s a participatory culture. Johansen noted that the Institute for the Future embraces this participatory and open-source culture, and uses crowd-sourcing techniques to solicit input to its forecasts. (See Open Source World and other related posts on openness.)

Back to the insult of being a “consumer.”  Johansen argued that a coming trend favors self-identification as “makers” — people who are actively contributing to society, in whatever form fits, whether it’s cooking dinner or writing a novel or woodworking. Makers are contributing, active, participating.

He has tracked the rise of the Maker movement, noting Maker Faires springing up to celebrate creativity vs. consumerism, including in the Bay Area (of course!), Austin and around the world. (Should we do one in Kansas City?)

I think he’s on to something here.

I think there is a new awareness about the negative components of consumerism.  Bill Moyers had a brilliant conversation with Andrew Bacevich on this topic almost a year ago, and I haven’t been able to get it out of my head.  (Among the best parts: his description of America as an “empire of consumption.”) You can find it here.

A common thread in both theses is the participation of the individual in the SOLUTION.

The future  isn’t going to come from an establishment. Nobody trusts corporations or government to create the future. No, it’s up to us.

Johansen had a sticker on his laptop that says it all: I am making the future.

I like it.

I am making the future.

More from Bob Johansen here: Bob Johansen – Book Section Brief from Institute for the Future.

They came up with an idea: let each individual identify their own capabilities, skills and interests. The business leaders could then use this directory to find people with the right skills for the right jobs. A side benefit could be to understand what key skill sets are lacking, and then provide training.

A good idea. But it never came to pass.

On further discussion, the leaders decided they’d need some form of verification over what the individuals cited as their skills. What if people lied about their certifications or experience? Then there was the whole matter of capabilities — they’d need specific definitions for each level: interested, novice, apprentice, skilled, expert, etc. Who would judge? And just think of all the people who would certainly list inappropriate or non-business interests — why would we want to know that you coach a pre-teen baseball team?

The project fell apart under the added weight. It could have worked — if leaders had been willing to demonstrate trust. Trust was lacking in this organization.

Employee surveys later proved this: employees didn’t feel they were treated fairly, given enough information or valued for their contributions.

I remembered this story when I recently heard Brad Whitworth, senior communications manager at San Jose-based Cisco Systems Inc. He was a guest at a recent meeting of the Kansas City chapter of the International Association of Business Communicators.

Brad told about the employee directory at Cisco. The company had the idea to set up an open directory like a wiki: let employees describe themselves and be accountable for themselves.

This time, a different culture nurtured the concept. Cisco, a worldwide technology giant, promotes the “Human Network Effect” and uses slogans like “Knowledge is Power” to describe benefits of collaboration.

To kick it off, Chairman and CEO John Chambers listed his own areas of interest … including globalization, collaboration, TelePresence, Duke basketball and Diet Coke. (Folks around him say he’s practically a Diet Coke addict; he was willing to admit it and show 65,000 co-workers a human face.)

As others entered their info, the directory provided the link to individuals’ assets that were previously invisible. Communities started to form across the organization around business topics. These groups started sharing their collective wisdom on intranet pages that they “owned” as part of a user-built Ciscopedia.

Pretty soon, the wealth of knowledge paid off.  A sales team needed help finding a systems engineer in home networking who was fluent in Mandarin. Using those search terms in the directory, they found a colleague who was able to answer a customer’s questions and seal a deal.

It’s all about trust.

Open up with the people you work with, and you can find common ground. Show trust if you want others to trust you. Share information if you want others to share with you.

Collaboration wins over fear of risk every time.

Corporate Social Responsibility is the integration of business operations and values, whereby the interests of all stakeholders including investors, customers, employees, the community and the environment are reflected in the company’s policies and actions. (CSRwire.com)

Earth Day had me thinking about why businesses behave so differently from what we expect of people. And how that’s just not OK anymore.

How often do we see business operating without a sense of responsibility for actions? (AIG? Enron?) Is it because businesses are identified as an “it” rather than a “he” or “she”? It’s not personal, it’s not even a person — it’s something removed from the human individual and, therefore, not expected to behave as a human?

I think the old ways of doing business are changing, swept in on a wave of transparency and accountability. Corporate social responsibility appears to be taking hold for real, a response to the demands of customers, employees and stakeholders.  (Another example of individuals using the collective voice to agitate for change!)

Evidence from Daniel Yankelovich, the masterful public opinion research leader, gave me hope. In an interview with The McKinsey Quarterly, he articulates the case for real change in corporate culture.

Paraphrasing Yankelovich: The question shouldn’t be — Is it legal? The question should be –Is it good for the public?

He makes the case that corporate strategy has to answer two questions:

• Does it enhance the company’s long-term profitability?
• Does it serve the public good?

It’s a big change from Milton Friedman’s position that as long as a company is profitable, it is automatically serving the public good. We now expect more. Sure, it’s legal to pay an executive 250 times the wage of the average worker in the company … but is it right?

Yankelovich says the development of trust equity with the public will be a major competitive asset in today’s corporate environment.  He’s right — change will occur only if the public good also serves the bottom line, if there’s a true value to trust equity with the public, consumers, stakeholders.

I’m keeping his questions top of mind with my business and with my work with clients:  will the business strategies enhance profitability, AND, will those strategies serve the public good? The answer to both has to be Yes.

I had the good fortune to hear Dr. William Duncan, president and chief executive of the Kansas City Area Life Sciences Institute, speaking at a meeting yesterday. He was talking to job seekers, professionals who were interested in learning more about the growing life sciences industry here.

The institute is the focal point in the region’s goal to attract and develop the area as a bioscience and biotechnology center of excellence, developing on the natural strengths of the region, which include the clinical research firms based here, the depth and breadth of animal health firms here (five of the top 10 companies have headquarters here, 31 percent of global revenues come from this region).

My favorite part of the discussion was his recollection of the development of the institute, which was founded in 1999, a result of engagement between the Stowers Institute, the Civic Council and the Kansas City Area Development Council (and others).

Early on, the group noted that despite the available assets, the region lacked a major top-tier biomedical life sciences university. The answer, it turned out, was to fill the gap with a collaborative effort between the existing players: the KU Med Center, St. Luke’s Hospital, UMKC, Midwest Research Institute and others.

Dr. Duncan described how the various leaders were not accustomed to working together.

“In the early days, it was difficult to get them to come to meetings,” he said. “But now, the culture has changed and there is a willingness to collaborate.”

So powerful, this collaboration.

In this case, Duncan attributed the collaboration success to a couple of key factors:

• It developed with an empowered board of leaders who set the tone. It wasn’t driven by a single institute, but by many who saw the power in building something greater than could be developed independently.
• It engaged the entire community — both sides of the state line, regional agencies and groups, government, civic groups, business leaders, academia and interested members of the community.  People were able to set aside differences (yes, border wars and deep university allegiances) and focus on building something together.

It was inclusive and that crowning philosophy was a key to the collaboration and to the early success of the region’s development — now home to more than 300 life sciences companies.

But Dr. Duncan had a caution — an additional culture change is needed here.  He described an attitude common on the East and West coasts, where a failed entrepreneur is hailed as a hero. In places like San Francisco and Boston, these types are respected and encouraged, he noted, but here, there’s a tendency to just look at the label: failure.

“We need a culture change in KC,” he said. “We need to accept failure and embrace risk.”

He is not talking about admitting defeat or taking wild risks — he’s talking about driving a change in the prevailing business attitudes here, one that would make us more open to learning from mis-steps and supporting measured risk.  Collectively. Inclusively.

Although Dr. Duncan also spoke with passion about challenges of  technical bioresearch, complex investment/profitability strategies and difficult political scenarios — this was my favorite part of the discussion.   He was just talking about how people deal with each other.

So much of our success with any initiative comes down to how folks can best work together: collaborate, look beyond a label, work toward something bigger than yourself.

I can’t help but wonder if these culture changes might be the most difficult part of Dr. Duncan’s job.

I can’t help but believe that embracing these culture changes might be more even valuable to our region than the life sciences initiative that launched them.

I recently read a wonderful book, Playing the Enemy, Nelson Mandela and the Game that Made a Nation, by John Carlin. It’s packaged as a sports book but it’s much more — contemporary history and a study of the  leadership skills of Nelson Mandela.

I’ll admit up front that Mandela has long been a hero of mine. I remember my early awareness of Mandela, when I was just a high school student — it was an early experience of outrage that this man had been behind bars for nearly my entire life. I loved the anthem to him and did my part to avoid doing business with apartheid-supporting business (I remember running out of gas once because I refused to stop at a Shell Oil gas station).

But what I didn’t really understand until I read this book is how Mandela used his personal communication and collaboration skills to knit the country together, one person at a time. And that his power as a communicator was such that each person he engaged also spread the message to an ever-widening circle of people as well. His strategy brought black support to the so-called “white man’s game” to gain the unity of the entire nation.

The book describes the power of rugby, which is practically a religion in South Africa. The game is emotionally charged, though, as South Africa’s team had been notoriously racist — an embodiment of white supremist rule — and  as a result had been banned from international play as a protest against apartheid. In 1995, the ban dropped after Mandela’s election to presidency, South Africa’s Springboks have a shot at the World Cup.

Where others saw a sporting event, Mandela saw the potential to unite a nation.  He collaborates, quietly and effectively, using his legendary charm until he has won over each member of the team. They are humbled by his attention, by his interest in them and he helps them see that they can represent something much greater. The team demonstrates their commitment to Mandela by learning the South African Black resistance anthem and singing it at the games. The black population turns rugby-mad, and soon all political factions drop their former biases and unite in support of the team of young men playing for the championship.

But the team plays for more than just a title — they play for the honor of their country, for its redemption, for courage. I finished the book in tears, and in awe of the leadership lesson.

UPDATE: Clint Eastwood has the rights to the book and the film version has begun, with Morgan Freeman as Mandela and Matt Damon as the captain of Springboks rugby team. More details here.