Home Grown is the Best

VIATeC is a cross between an industry association and an economic development agency. We exist to help technology companies grow and that means understanding their opportunities and challenges and doing what we can to help them leverage the good stuff and mitigate the tough stuff.  Often that means addressing things that individual companies would be less effective at on their own.  

Things like branding or messaging about the opportunities in Greater Victoria's tech sector are best addressed by an entity working on behalf of the many.  It is tough to demonstrate the return on investment for our members on activities like these but we are fortunate to live in the kind of city that is made up of companies and, more importantly people, that get it.  We don't try and draw straight lines between raising awareness of tech careers in high school kids and any individual member's bottom-line and they don't ask us to. 

People have a lot of different ideas of what economic development means. Many think it is about zoning and tax holidays to attract new companies to your area.  I'm of a different mind on this.

If you work with local entrepreneurs to build successful businesses, their roots in the community run very deep.  They chose Victoria for a variety of reasons and they do not want to leave.  However, look at operations like JDS Uniphase and West Corporation.  At the time they arrived in Victoria, both were significant players in their fields and in both cases there was lots of profile about their arrival but when economic conditions shifted these operations were the first to be packed up.  The founders, board members and majority shareholders of those companies lived somewhere else so their roots were firmly planted elsewhere.

I don't blame them.  We have local companies with branch offices all over the world and, all things being equal, they aren't about to shut down their home office to move to the mid-west or China.  The roots where the seedling started are always the deepest and if they have what they need to thrive here they will stay firmly rooted here.

I believe that if we focus on providing the right ecosystem we can grow our own companies with roots that run so deep the risk of transplanting is significantly reduced and they in turn will provide stability and an example to the up an coming seedlings of what is possible.  

I think the true key to economic development is attracting people not companies. What is great about Victoria is that even when some of our biggest trees (companies) get harvested the founders stick around to water (invest) the next wave of seedlings and help tend to the garden (mentor).   Better yet, most of our recent acquisitions have not been transplanted at all…they've been left to thrive right here where they have shown they can flourish.