Lorraine Ball

According to Forbes Magazine, Indy is the most affordable city in America.

Ratings like this are sure to help our economy grow.

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On a regular basis, Roundpeg features our favorite business events, but our lists are starting to get stale? What’s your favorite business event?

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Local business expert Lorraine Ball to be among an elite group of local business professionals judging student business plans. The plans, written by Hamilton County high school students, have been submitted to the Hamilton County Business Alliance who is sponsoring the competition.

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Members of the Lacy Leadership Association have formed several volunteer task forces that came about after 200 community leaders – all members of the leadership organization – spent March 1 talking about creating a vision for Indianapolis’ future.
One group formed to discuss charter schools, focusing on public funding, legislation and community impact issues. Others are ready to get involved in the development of the Indianapolis Cultural Trail, which will connect downtown neighborhoods through a bike and pedestrian trail. A third group intends to increase Indianapolis’ reputation as a “Healthy, Green City.”

“We asked our members to commit to a day of thinking, imagining and dreaming what Indianapolis can aspire to in the next 10 to 20 years,” said Theresa Farrington Rhodes, executive director of Lacy Leadership Association. “Most people found the event to be inspiring, and many have been motivated to take action.”

It is easy to be inspired when you learn firsthand from a group of business and city leaders, who several years ago joined together to figure out how to transform what once was known as IndyNoPlace to a world-class city. It took dreaming big, a huge leap of faith, and making connections in order to build a football stadium, an urban park and a downtown mall, explained members of the original City Committee. Several members of this group joined LLA members on March 1 to share their key insights. Attendees included Ted Boehm, Jim Browning, Tom King, Ned Lamkin, Louis Mahern, Bob Baxter, and Bill McGowan.

Lacy Leadership Association is developing a white paper based on the forum, which was the first of its kind for Indianapolis’ premier leadership network. LLA will also facilitate further discussions and help connect members who want to get involved.

For more information about LLA visit www.lacyleadership.org.

Theresa Farrington Rhodes
Executive Director
Lacy Leadership Association
phone: (317) 631-6542 ext. 176
fax: (317) 637-7020www.lacyleadership.org

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Author, Richard Florida believes great cities attract creative people, and the mark of success in the next 10 years will be the size of the creative class. Indy is not on his list, YET. With all that we are doing, with downtown development, the construction of the Cultural Trail, expansion of museums and the new stadium project, I believe we will be on this next printing.

To see who has made it to the list go to:http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/100/open_fast-cities.html

Roundpeg, one of Indianapolis’ leading small business marketing firms, will reach an important milestone this month. January 9th marks the five year anniversary of the formation of the company.

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John MacIntyre of the Indy Star compiled an interesting set of statistics on job creation for the period from 2002 – 2003:

• 1.6 Million jobs were created by firms with fewer than 20 employees
• 400,00 jobs were created by firms with 20 – 499 employees
• 1 million jobs were lost by firms with more than 500 employees

And yet we keep changing large companies with tax incentives and special deals! If we really want to put people to work, lets put our tax dollars behind the companies really making a difference.

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Boston-based software firm VFA Inc. said today it has acquired Indianapolis-based Mezzia Ince. Good news for Mezzia, bad news for Indy! What can we do to help our local firms acquire others, rather than always being the ones that are bought?

http://www.vfa.com/aboutus/press_060530.htm

Every day the press focuses on big business in Indiana. Will we or won’t we get the latest Toyota, Honda or other plant? While important to our economy, I think we are missing a very large business segment: Small and Mico Business.

In Central Indiana, there are more than 65,000 companies with sales under $1 million dollars. Isn’t it about time someone paid attention (not just lip service) to them??
If even 10% of these firms add one employee this year, it will have a greater impact on our economy than three manufacturing plants. So instead of planning trips to Japan, maybe just once in awhile our leaders should plan a trip to the local business community.

And maybe instead of multi-million dollar incentives for large companies to move here, and then leave, we should spend just a fraction of that creating real opportunities for small local business owners.

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