Goodbye Silicon Valley, Hello Silicon Prairie
INDIANAPOLIS – Students looking for a job in Indiana’s technology sector won’t have to travel to Silicon Valley to find their dream job....
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By Derreck Stahly
TheStatehouseFile.com
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INDIANAPOLIS – Graduates looking for a career in Indiana’s technology sector won’t have to travel to the Silicon Valley to find their dream job.
Recently Indiana has been experiencing a technology revolution. The technology sector in Indiana is one of the fastest growing sectors in Indiana right now, according to Tech Point.
Tech Point is an organization that creates programs to help growth in Indiana’s tech community through research and workforce training.
Josh Excell, Butler University senior and computer engineering major, said he sees the growth in Indiana’s tech sector and that Computer engineering in particular is a very marketable major.
“I ended up applying to interactive that same week for the job, and they picked me right away in about a week or so,” Excell said. “Overall it’s been an easy process to find a job, or quickly as an engineer, but not without a little bit of luck.”
A study conducted by Tech Point from 2009-2014 showed a 54.5 percent increase in computer and IT job openings in Indiana.
“I think in some ways it’s a renaissance on the tech side,” said David Roberts, president of Batteries Innovation Center. “If you look at Indiana’s history since the industrial revolution we’ve played a significant role in technology, innovation, growth and manufacturing.”
Batteries Innovation Center is a nonprofit lab that helps companies test their new technologies. This lab allows smaller companies to have access to a workspace for experiments without fronting the money themselves. Located in Newberry, Batteries Innovation Center is an attempt to create economic development in a rural area of Indiana.
“Batteries Innovation Center is an experiment by state and local partners to see if you can do rural economic development with a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) focus,” Roberts said.
Roberts said his lab can build relationships with tech firms outside of Indiana by bringing value to them. This helps bring these companies into the Indiana market. Such companies include Black Diamond in Austin Texas, which is currently a forerunner in nanomaterials in batteries. According to Roberts partnerships like these help move Indiana’s tech industry forward.
Batteries Innovation also works with Purdue, IUPUI and Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology to provide hands on learning experiences.
With growth in technology, Indiana’s Chamber of Commerce is working to advance policy related to technology and innovation. These policies will help to increase the growth of technology-based companies in Indiana. The chamber has created the Tech and Innovation Council to address these policies.
One strategy the council is focusing on is human capital.
“We realize it’s so important with innovation based businesses, they really rely on human capital more than traditional capitals,” said Mark Lawrance, vice president of engagement and innovation policy for the Indiana Chamber of Commerce.
Lawrance said these tech companies need workers that meet their expectations as the industry grows and advances.
“Talent, as we have also learned, talent is the number one site selection factor for corporate decision makers, when they decide where to locate facilities or expand existing operations,” Lawrance said.
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Luckily for Indiana, the state has many schools that are producing gifted individuals in tech fields. Indiana University, the University of Notre Dame and Purdue all have excellent programs for engineering and computer science, Lawrance said. However, Lawrance worries about keeping these gifted students in the state, rather than watching these students leave to the west coast for Silicon Valley.
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Indiana is combating the appeal of the West and East coast by providing workers with a lower cost of living. While many people consider the Midwest to be the fly over states, the low cost of land and housing means that companies can save money by moving in to the state.
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“Those costs start to be really significant because you’re starting to talk about your cost to run a company of that size being in the mid-$50 million range in the bay, versus $35, $36 million here in Indiana,” Roberts said.
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One company that can help demonstrate Indiana tech sector growth is Determine Inc. The company has committed to moving its headquarters to Carmel. The state offered the company a $400,000 in tax credits so the firm can create 24 additional jobs adding to 35 already here. The company also has plans to spend $700,000 to lease a new office in Carmel.
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Another company committed to taking Indiana’s tech forward is Safe Hiring Solutions, Danville. The company focuses on work-force development, recruiting and enhancing hiring. The company plans to create as many as 284 new high wage positions by 2020 in Indiana.
In a statement Mike McCarty, chief executive officer of Safe Hiring Solutions and Safe Recruiting Solutions, said, “Growing up in central Indiana, we are comfortable here, and the Midwestern values that are instilled in each of us has allowed our business to flourish over the past 13 years.”
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Gov.- elect Eric Holcomb said in a statement that Indiana has worked hard to create a positive business climate, which ranks in the top five in the nation, creating low taxes and limiting government regulations to advance Hoosiers opportunities to grow their own businesses.
This growth is not just limited to computer and IT-related jobs. Indiana also is seeing some growth on the healthcare side in the medical information technologies that are used to keep medical records.
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Brian Dixon, Associate Professor, Department of Epidemiology, Richard M. Fairbanks School of Public Health, has seen growth in challenges that center on students creating an app for medical data. The winners are given either a cash prize or help creating their own startup that would allow them to incubate their ideas. The Indiana Big Data conference hosted a student competition were groups had to analysis Twitter data.
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“One team analyzed the data to try and identify different types of cancers and rather cancer awareness campaigns were having a broad reach of getting the message out,” Dixon said.
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Dixon pointed to these student competitions as a growing trend over the past few years to a trend that allows students to get together and think outside the box about challenges set up by professionals in the field. With Indiana hosting these types of competitions it creates an effective way for students to get involved with bigger technology companies.
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With all of these big tech companies moving toward Indiana the wage a computer engineer might make comes into question. Excell said staying here or moving west the money doesn’t matter to him.
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“For me the money isn’t as big of a deal,”Josh said. “For me its gratification of my work. I wanna be able to have success when I come home from my job, I wanna be like you know what I actually enjoyed going to work.”
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Indianapolis Tech Sector Boom
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