This column is all talk. Wouldn't you rather have action?

        OK, here's action. On Nov. 10, Procter & Gamble Chief Executive Officer A.G. Lafley announced the company will put $250,000 and its considerable muscle behind a new technology council for Greater Cincinnati.

        That's action. Mr. Lafley told the Chamber of Commerce's annual business luncheon crowd that Cincinnati has all the makings of a high-tech hub — workers, airport, infrastructure, universities. But it lacks a few key elements, such as venture capital and a well-organized work force development effort.

        A friend told me this week he was gratified to hear Mr. Lafley say all this, because it's the same thing a lot people have been saying around here for the past year.

        But a lot of people around here aren't the CEO of the nation's 23rd-largest company. His words put some octane into a year-old movement to form a council to coordinate high-tech programs in the region.
       

Timing is right
               That's great, but why this issue, and why now? There's no clear answer, but consider this:

        • It's the right issue for P&G right now. Mr. Lafley in June became CEO of a company dispirited first by his predecessor's heavy-handed restructuring effort, then by a 50 percent drop in its stock price. To get rich, P&G needs to embrace not just technology but its ethos. Every employee has to learn to make decisions at Internet speed, so it would benefit the company if Cincinnati became tuned in to technology.

        • For the region, it's a bandwagon that doesn't need much of a push. Think about all the wasted motion we've seen on regional initiatives — repeat reports, comedic committees. Michael Gallis spent two years of his life and ended up losing money working for the Metropolitan Growth Alliance on a handbook for regional development, only to see the well-meaning alliance squander the ensuing 15 months with lots of talk and no action.

        Meanwhile, the upstarts at the startups in Over-the-Rhine got together with Cincinnati City Hall to find ways the two can help each other — how technology can help the city, and how the city can help the tech community. In 100 days, this “fast break,” as they called it, produced a set of initiatives.

        That led to discussions about why P&G wasn't involved, and what role it and the other big companies should play. “I honestly believe that there's a certain time for everything, and this is exactly the time for Cincinnati,” said Rich Kiley, director of P&G's Internet Ventures Fund. “You just talk to people for 60 seconds, and they immediately get it.”
       

The perfect issue
              

        A regional effort aimed at making Cincinnati a New Economy hub might be the perfect issue, because there's something for everybody. It's important to the little guys in this town, because they have the ideas and the energy but not the money and the influence. The big guys — who seem to be realizing, whether they like it or not, that every business in the 21st century is a technology business — need the workers and the services. The Metropolitan Growth Alliance needs such an issue for the region to rally around.

        The tech council, being organized by the Chamber of Commerce, will need about $1 million to start. It's safe to assume every big company in town will be asked for help now, and more later. Let's keep the conversations short.

        E-mail John Byczkowski at johnb@enquirer.com, or call 768-8377. Find a list of local New Economy companies at http://enquirer.com/neweconomy/.
       

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