Robert Litan: Develop new generation of entrepreneurs

Editor’s note: An earlier version of this commentary incorrectly identified the founder of Rent-A-Center.

Great cities are built on the foundations laid by great entrepreneurs. Wichita is no exception.

A succession of aircraft pioneers – Clyde Cessna, Walter Beech and Bill Lear – put Wichita on the national map. The Carney brothers launching Pizza Hut, Tom Devlin’s Rent-A-Center, a string of successful oil producers and real estate developers, along with some innovative physicians and, of course, Shocker basketball, helped keep us there. And the extraordinary success of Koch Industries gives Wichita a highly diversified anchor business that provides economic stability to the city while attracting highly educated talent to work here.

But in his thoroughly documented and widely discussed report on Wichita’s future, urban data analyst James Chung has pointed to the need for Wichita to develop a new generation of entrepreneurial success stories if our city is to have a bright future in this century and beyond. Where will these bold business leaders come from?

One thing is certain: Government can’t and won’t create them. At best, local government can make it easier for new companies to launch and to provide high-quality public services at reasonable cost to retain them and the people they hire.

What Wichita is missing, but can attain with some hard work by local citizens, is a successful entrepreneurial community – an ecosystem of talented entrepreneurs, financed by local and eventually out-of-region investors, mentors and service providers.

That’s what’s made entrepreneurial hot spots around the country successful, and we can do it here, by taking advantage of our unique local comparative advantage – expertise in manufacturing and all-things-aircraft – and melding it with new ideas in the heads of our own residents who need an ecosystem to give them the encouragement and comfort they need to take the entrepreneurial plunge.

Help is on the way. On Feb. 10, 1 Million Cups Wichita (1millioncups.com/wichita) will open its weekly sessions (8:30 to 10:30 a.m.) at 238 N. Mead in Old Town. This remarkable initiative launched four years ago by the Kauffman Foundation of Kansas City, Mo., features two entrepreneurs a week who ask other entrepreneurs, investors and interested local citizens in the audience for advice in addressing a pressing business problem.

The sessions, now at 78 other cities, not only help the entrepreneurs solve their own problems but introduce actual and would-be entrepreneurs to each other. In no time at all, Wichita will have that entrepreneurial community and ecosystem that solve the entrepreneur’s greatest problems: the loneliness of her enterprise and not knowing who and where to go for help.

1 Million Cups Wichita will also help generate the deal flow that local angel and venture capital investors – such as Gary Oborny and Scott Schwindaman, Trish Brasted, Jeff Turner and others – very much need to really build our own, unique ecosystem of new and existing growing businesses.

I am confident that sooner rather than later Wichita will be abuzz with the talk of entrepreneurship, which built our city in the 20th century and promises to take us to greater heights in this century.

This story was originally published December 19, 2015 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Robert Litan: Develop new generation of entrepreneurs."