IGNACIO – Innovation was the buzzword on the lips of many speakers Wednesday at the seventh annual La Plata County Economic Development Alliance economic summit.
With the local economy humming along nicely, there was little discussion of economic conditions. Participants instead wanted to talk about technological changes.
Much of the discussion revolved around the increasing use of mobile phones for ordering, payments and reservations.
“This is the medium you need to start thinking about,” said Rick Smith, owner of Data Safe Services, as he held a phone aloft.
Katie Burnett of Kosh Solutions in Durango shared research suggesting 40 percent of restaurant customers would use their mobile phones for ordering, and 32 percent would use mobile payments.
“Everybody is a little more tech savvy than they were about five years ago,” she said.
The annual conference, held this year at the Sky Ute Event Center, brought together more than 300 business leaders who were looking to network and learn. The keynote speech was given by Jay Elliot, a former senior vice president at Apple, who told stories of his former boss, the late tech icon Steve Jobs.
“What happened at Apple wasn’t by luck,” he said. “It was planned for, led for.”
Elliot said Jobs’ obsessive focus on the quality of products – from the Apple II computer to the iPhone – led to Apple’s stunning growth.
“Every product we came out with was the best it could be at the time,” he said.
Elliot told a story of Jobs dropping a prototype iPod that he regarded as too large into an aquarium, pointing to the resulting air bubbles as proof the gadget could be made smaller.
“He gave the world incredible products, and that’s what he should be remembered for,” Elliot said.
Elliot now is CEO of IMedGo, which develops health care-related mobile phone applications. The health-care industry is ripe for innovations that focus on patients rather than insurance groups or doctors, he said.
In a separate session, Kerry Siggins, CEO of Durango’s StoneAge Waterblast Tools, discussed fostering innovation among her 75 employees.
“Failure is absolutely part of innovation, and you have to create an organization where it’s OK to fail,” she said. “It’s OK to try things and say, ‘That didn’t work.’”
StoneAge is employee-owned, a structure Siggins said “creates a really unique culture.” StoneAge sells industrial high-pressure water cleaning tools around the world.
Among Siggins’ other tips: Hire smart people with diverse backgrounds, have an open door to all employees, encourage “constructive discontent” among employees to improve operations and focus on what your company does well.
“Rather than trying to be all things to all people, we focus on what we’re good at, which is our technology and our tools,” she said.
Participants said the conference was helpful.
Erin Sweet Neer, owner of MuniRevs, a Rico-area business that helps municipal governments process sales-tax payments, said she looks for ways to learn and grow.
“I walk out of conferences like this with a thousand new ideas,” she said.
cslothower@durangoherald.com
