“During a gold rush, sell shovels.”
This saying arose following the California gold rush of the mid-19th century when it became clear that few prospectors made money panning for gold while the suppliers who sold them shovels and picks profited nicely.
In fact, the first millionaire of the California gold rush was Samuel Brannan, who opened a store near present-day Sacramento and made his fortune supplying the frenzied miners with everything they needed to try and strike it rich. Another innovator, Levi Strauss, sold riveted blue jeans to the hard-working miners — and we all know how that worked out.
A current application of the “sell shovels” principle hit me recently while touring an impressive manufacturing training facility in South Carolina. As we explored an array of classrooms and laboratories featuring state-of-the-art technologies on which manufacturing talent is being trained, it struck me that practically none of the technologies being utilized were designed and built locally. In other words, the companies supplying the tools for advanced manufacturing are headquartered elsewhere.
Why is that? Our state, and especially the Upstate region, possesses a world-class portfolio of advanced manufacturers operating here, making automobiles, gas turbines, advanced materials and much more. Yet the tools and technologies they need to be successful today and tomorrow, think “shovels and picks” for advanced manufacturing, are being created elsewhere, and the economic benefits of doing so are being reaped elsewhere too.
What’s preventing us from putting an economic development stake in the ground to become the global leader in supplying new innovations for manufacturers around the globe? Doing so would improve our existing industry competitiveness, make recruiting new manufacturing easier and, perhaps most importantly, would create the soil conditions for entrepreneurs creating new manufacturing technologies to launch and scale their companies here.
This would be no small task and would require major, long-term commitments of community resources and political capital to be successful. The economic returns would be immense, and we have the foundational elements to be successful. After all, where better to create the future tools for manufacturers than an area already known around the world for manufacturing excellence?
– John Moore is a principal with Momenteum Strategies, an Upstate-based consulting firm specializing in helping communities and their economic development organizations build thriving, impactful innovation ecosystems.
