Talent Clustering Is the Solution to Southern Utah's Brain Drain

Talent Clustering Is the Solution to Southern Utah’s Brain Drain

By Brad Plothow

Years ago, I was attending an expo event and noticed that I was unconsciously

attracted to the booths with the most people gathered around. It seemed counterintuitive since I don’t like crowds, and the busy booths felt chaotic. Still, something about a gathering whispers that “the good stuff is here.”

Expo crowds are a microcosm of an economic concept called “clustering.” When more people clamor around a particular booth, the vendor makes more money and exposes his products to more people, which leads to network effects that further increase brand awareness and sales.

To borrow a business cliche, clustering creates a flywheel.

There is a lesson here for southern Utah’s next chapter of economic and business growth. If you can create an environment that consistently attracts talented people and incentivizes them to collaborate, it will create a ton of economic benefit for everyone. Of course, a fixation on masses of people misses the point. You need a mix of the right skills and experiences to create a “talent cluster.”

What Is a Talent Cluster?

The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated a preexisting trend toward hybrid work arrangements for professionals in knowledge fields. But even in a world of remote work, there is power in proximity.

This power is reflected in a body of research and policy recommendations from the Brookings Institution. In a 2017 report, authors Martin Neil Baily and Nicholas Montalbano analyzed the benefits of “clusters and innovation districts” in California’s Silicon Valley, North Carolina’s Research Triangle, and other urban and regional clusters, which they define as “geographic concentrations of interconnected businesses, suppliers, and associated institutions.”

In other words, clusters and innovation districts are places where a bunch of people, companies, and institutions gather and throw gas on the economic fire.

Imagine this concept, but instead of firms and universities, it is just a bunch of talented people congregating in a region. What happens when people with the right mix of skills, experiences, and resources gather in the same geographic place? You get a talent cluster that generates immense creative and economic energy.

Why Southern Utah?

I graduated from Pine View High School in 2000, left for college, and then couldn’t find a professional path back to the red rocks of my formative years for two decades. My story is all too common; southern Utah has historically exported young people whose chosen career isn’t in real estate, hospitality, healthcare, or similar legacy industries.

This intergenerational brain drain hasn’t stopped people from moving in. On the contrary, Washington County has experienced some of the most robust in-migration in all of Utah, with 41 percent gains in population since 2010. The cinnamon sands of St. George and its surrounding cities are simmering, so to speak.

The problem is that too few people are moving in because their careers brought them here. St. George is still a hotbed for snowbirds and retirees, and decades of emphasis on resort town amenities have only increased relocation by folks who made their money elsewhere. In recent years, anecdotes suggest more remote workers have been putting down roots in our pristine basin as well. These are positive trends, but we also need to proactively attract a diverse community of highly skilled and experienced professionals who want to work and build in our communities.

In-migration doesn’t necessarily lead to talent clustering, but it can provide the raw ingredients. Interior designers sometimes talk about “activating” a space: creating a catalyst for people to use it for its intended purpose. Similarly, we need a catalyst to activate our growing talent pool—to get smart, creative, and accomplished people connecting and collaborating.

Beacon on a Hill

The catalyst to activate southern Utah as a talent cluster is already coming together. The Tech Ridge development is more than a commercial real estate project. It’s an opportunity to pack proverbial metric tons of talented people into a defined physical area and watch the creative energy explode.

Tech isn’t the only sector of importance to Washington County, but it’s the most expedient opportunity to create new industries, expand high-paying career opportunities, support startup companies, attract talented workers, and provide a path for homegrown talent to stay. That’s the blueprint for building a talent cluster.

We need the community’s enthusiastic support for Tech Ridge and similar efforts to encourage emerging industries and startups, attract regional offices from established tech players, and incentivize career growth in southern Utah. We also need to embrace both our homegrown and transplanted professionals while ensuring that our community is a welcoming place for people of all backgrounds.

The Perils of Provincialism

For all its beauty and virtue, southern Utah sometimes is reluctant to accept “outsiders.” It’s a natural human response to protect and preserve something we love, especially if we feel we’ve had a hand in creating it.

That said, provincialism is self-defeating. Change is inevitable, and it’s neither good nor bad. It just is. We have an opportunity to shape the change we want, to guide it toward a goal that brings greater prosperity for all.

We must embrace the virtues of a more eclectic and diverse community because talent clusters can’t emerge without it. A decade ago, economists Quamrul Ashraf of Williams College and Oded Galor of Brown University published a seminal study about the link between diversity and economic prosperity. As Bloomberg’s Richard Florida wrote in summarizing their research, “diversity spurs economic development, and homogeneity slows it down.”

Diversity doesn’t just refer to race, ethnicity, and culture. It also refers to professional experience. Years ago, I worked for a tech company with headquarters in San Francisco and a large office in Lehi, Utah. I joined as the vice president of marketing and reported directly to the CEO. Then after a few years, the CEO hired a vice president of growth and a COO, splitting my responsibilities with the former and shifting my reporting line into the latter.

The changes reflected the company’s growth and the fact that my skills and experience were highly valued but insufficient for where the firm was going. My confidence and ego were hurt because I thought I could do it all and was smart enough to figure out the parts I didn’t know.

I was wrong to assume ambition and will are replacements for experience, but thankfully, I eventually adapted instead of digging in. Looking back, my years working under that COO and alongside that vice president of growth were the most valuable of my career. They each had skills and experience that I did not, and I learned far more from them than I could have learned trying to figure everything out myself. I realize now that I didn’t know what I didn’t know, and I’m better now on account of that precious time of concentrated learning.

Northern Utah’s Silicon Slopes went through a similar experience years ago, when the likes of Qualtrics, Domo, Instructure, Pluralsight, and others rose to prominence, took massive amounts of venture capital, and moved toward big exits. They all had talented Utah workers on their payrolls, but they also recruited people from other markets who’d already helped tech companies grow and IPO. Initially, this blend of outsiders and true-blue Utahns was met with resentment by the latter. Over time, the wisdom of blending “smart people figuring it out” with “been there and done that” became clear.

Talent is the greatest economic force on the planet. Let’s attract more than our fair share to our beautiful vistas, with faith in a better tomorrow and without misplaced fear.

Brad Plothow is Chief Growth Officer at Intergalactic, a St. George startup serving the defense aerospace, civil aviation, and commercial space sectors. He has spent the last decade helping tech companies grow in Silicon Slopes, Silicon Valley, and beyond.