It has been – and will continue to be – a rocky road for technology businesses in Rhode Island, information technology experts predicted at the recent “Getting Connected in the 21st Century” summit sponsored by Providence Business News.
“I think we’re in a really uncertain period, highlighted by the events of September 11,” said Graham Allen, director of digital strategies at Textron.
Rhode Island's Market Has Changed. Developers, Builders, Investors and Sellers Must Change With It.
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Allen was one of five experts recruited to discuss the role of technology in the state.
James O. Reavis, partner at Hinckley, Allen & Snyder LLP; Harold Records, chair of Bryant College’s Department of Computer Information Systems; Mandie Sullivan, president and chief operations officer at Silverlight Productions LLC; and Andries van Dam, one of the founders of Brown University’s computer science program, rounded out the panel.
The discussion was moderated by Providence Business News Editor Michael Pare, and will be broadcast on WSBE 36 at 8:00 p.m. on Oct. 3.
Van Dam agreed with Allen that the Rhode Island’s technology climate will be rocky, but he stressed that “institutions need more IT, not less of it. Tremendous things are on the way.”
Van Dam said people should not confuse the “dot.coms” with other technology fields.
Reavis said that many of those business concepts and subsequent disasters – the “dot.bombs” as they have often been referred to in the media – were the result of millions of dollars in investments in poor business plans.
“We got away from the traditional business plan of ‘Do we have a product? How do we get it to market?'” he said.
Citing the state’s absence of a highly educated labor pool and a lack of funding, van Dam said, “I think we’re way behind. I think we’re way behind other people on the East Coast.”
The key ingredient to turn that around, the panel unanimously agreed, is Rhode Island’s students.
Attention, Sullivan said, should be placed on “the disconnect between business and colleges and universitiesWe really do need to focus on young people and making (Rhode Island) attractive to them.”
“My students leave – they don’t stay,” said Records.
Van Dam said that because of the job flexibility available, many of his students go to the West Coast to settle and find work.
“My students want to work in the Silicon Valley,” he said.
And Records suggested that part of that challenge is “keeping (jobs) attractive to students, not just at the entry level, but at the second level.”
It is not uncommon for students to start their working lives here, but then be forced into relocation when they are no longer challenged by a job, Records said.
Huge signing bonuses and heavy recruitment – even years before a student is slated to graduate – are casualties of the uncertain economy.
“I think it’s kind of a rude awakening,” he said. “Reality is setting in. The same companies are not hiring as many people.”
While technology is notorious for developing and evolving quickly, Sullivan said that people need to review their business and figure out how technology will improve that business.
Reavis agreed: The “uses of technology must be clearly defined – maybe not for ordering a pizza, but for producing documents quicker.”
Technology doesn’t grow in a uniform manner, Records said. Greater flexibility within operating systems and a need for more bandwidth – necessary to the development of so many new products – were mentioned as hurdles business must confront. Which services and products should be chosen for development first needs to be determined.
In a classic case of supply and demand, many wireless providers, van Dam said, are going out of business. Those able to stay afloat are forced to raise prices.
Van Dam called it the “chicken and egg” dilemma: Consumers are hesitant to invest in technology such as cell phones until everybody has it, but they won’t buy the services if they’re not affordable.
Part of the problem, he said, is that people have pushed and pushed to classify network service as a utility, and it is more complicated than that.
Much attention, too, has been given to the subject of security in recent months, as the Code Red virus was passed from system to system around the world.
“We’re still underspending dramatically compared to the threat,” van Dam said. “We’ve been lulled into a false sense of security.”
