Tony Jeff, President & CEO, Innovate Mississippi, spoke to the Rotary Club of North Jackson at the club’s July 27 meeting. Jeff described the situation in Mississippi where it lags all other states in businesses in the Fortune 500. Mississippi has only one, Sanderson Farms (#662), whereas Arkansas who was dead last in 1960 now has 6 firms in the Fortune 500: Walmart (#1), Tyson Foods (#80), Murphy USA (#279), J. B. Hunt (#395), Dillards (#439), and Windstream (#474).
The salient question Jeff asked is “Why can’t Mississippi companies be the biggest in their fields? He showed the slide.
He responded “We can!”. And we must “think bigger and identify bottlenecks,” Then he asked the question to the meeting attendees “What is stopping you from being the biggest in the world?”
Jeff then said “for every winner, there are dozens of losers.” He cited several technology laws, in particular Grove’s Law, “Only the Paranoid Survive!” This law was formulated by Andy Grove, the founder of Intel.
With respect to being a Shark Tank, Jeff said that in the past 36 months, 43 Mississippi companies have raised $17.7.M
The events that Innovate MS sponsors are listed on this slide:
Innovate MS considers itself a Co-Builder with entrepreneurial organizations; i.e., it is offering special events in the latter part of 2021 and in 2022.
It will be expanding its angel funds in 2022 & 2023 to include the South Mississippi area and Oxford and the delta in the next two years.
Innovate MS offers connections to capital
Innovate MS’s commercialization model is a three-phase one with technical, marketing, and business components based on the models taught in engineering and business schools.
Jeff closed by reminding the club member of Innovate Mississippi's success stories:
And reminding us of what they do and have done
And that Innovate Mississippi is Mississippi’s “Shark Tank.”
We thank Jeff for his presentation and for what Innovate MS is doing for our state. He is shown during his presentation in the following photo.
