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Study Outlines
Need for Change

It's safe to say that most business and government leaders in the state recognized the existence of a "communications and information technology (CIT) cluster" in Mississippi long before Dr. Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School told them how to use it and expand it. His landmark study, however, for the first time outlined in great detail the need for a new approach to economic development.

Among the largest roadblocks to Mississippi's successful development of clusters, noted the study, was a faulty internal and external image of Mississippi's own business and industrial infrastructure. Too many Mississippians were suffering from a "can't do, second-class mindset" that was aided and abetted by inaccurate reporting by the national and international media.

Dr. Porter got his point across: Mississippi needed to overhaul its image, both internally and externally, and the best way to do that was to build upon the remarkable success story of the latter half of the 1990s.

The study also pointed to weak linkages among universities and between universities and CIT firms in Mississippi. A "lack of incentives for cooperation" and "little understanding of the role of networks in enhancing cluster competitiveness" were also cited as factors preventing Mississippi from reaching its full potential.

Having made the case for change, the challenge for Mississippi now is how to capitalize on its seed corn of the 1995-to-2000 era, that time period when the state saw its greatest economic growth thanks to such visionaries as Bernie Ebbers, John Palmer and Jim Barksdale.