Changing the minds of people who think good ideas can’t come from the middle states

“Isn’t it true that in the south, half the schools don’t even teach science, it’s just God and guns?” That was a real question asked by host Daniel Moss during the January 11th episode of “Bloomberg Benchmark,” an economic and financial podcast. Moss, an economics editor for Bloomberg in addition to his role as podcast…

“Isn’t it true that in the south, half the schools don’t even teach science, it’s just God and guns?”

That was a real question asked by host Daniel Moss during the January 11th episode of “Bloomberg Benchmark,” an economic and financial podcast. Moss, an economics editor for Bloomberg in addition to his role as podcast host, was born in Australia before living in Washington, D.C., and then Brooklyn.

The episode featured Moss speaking to Jared Dillian, a former trader and newsletter editor who had moved from New York City to Charleston, South Carolina, and discovered he liked living in a smaller city.

Apparently, Moss believes half of the south is taught—in school—that the best way to solve climate change is to shoot it out of the sky.

The Silicon Prairie isn’t the south. However, after spending a good part of the last two years writing about the startup scene in St. Louis, and broadly the Midwest, I can tell you the regional bias (and, frankly, outright ignorance) Daniel Moss displays is a real thing.

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Negative perceptions about non-coastal America are as widely held about the parts of the country that grow corn as they are about the parts of the country that grow cotton.

Of course, residents of the South, Midwest, and other non-coastal locations hold their own biases, but those biases usually don’t include the idea that half of the people living in San Francisco were too busy playing with their hacky sacks to learn photosynthesis or the scientific method.

Hearing Daniel Moss, an intelligent, educated, influential person make that statement made me angry, in part because Moss is saying there is a 50/50 chance my three kids are entering adulthood without a basic understanding of science.

But being angry about a bias doesn’t change anything. Instead, those of us who live outside the coasts and believe our hometowns produce talented, innovative people with great ideas need to work to change that bias.

We need to be advocates for local businesses and startups. Whenever possible, we need to shop locally—which means more than just buying our produce from a farmer’s market. It means choosing to use the HR platform developed by the startup in our local entrepreneurial ecosystem, rather than the one developed in Silicon Valley. It means putting our money in local venture funds, even they deliver (at least initially) a lower return. It means really believing and investing in our communities, rather than using products and platforms made in other places.

It also means telling our story. The Midwestern tendency to be humble and wait for the world to discover us is admirable, but it’s built on the flawed premise that someone is looking—and that they are looking with an open mind.

The unfortunate reality is that there are people living on the coasts (like Daniel Moss) who view even the smartest Midwesterners and Southerners as the equivalent of a baboon that learns sign language: More evolved than his or her peers, but certainly not an equal.

Changing that perception requires consistently telling a better story. Thankfully, the better story is also the true story. People like Daniel Moss apparently forget that while Facebook and Snapchat were invented on the coasts, the Midwest gave us Henry Ford and the Wright brothers. This part of the country was a source of innovation long before the media based on the coasts of the country started thinking Midwestern (and Southern) innovators and startups were merely a novelty worthy of mentioning in the occasional “Hey look, there is more than heroin and abandoned factories in (fill in the city)” articles spotlighting non-coastal entrepreneurial ecosystems.

America is obviously deeply polarized, and that polarization extends to uninformed stereotypes about where people come from, and what someone’s place of birth (or adopted hometown) says about their intellectual capability and entrepreneurial potential.

A bunch of founders and startups aren’t going to single-handedly change that perception, but we can make a dent in it. If we choose to do business locally, invest in homegrown startups, and be aggressive about telling our story, we can help remind people like Daniel Moss that there is far more to the parts of the country people fly over than just God and guns.

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J.C. McKissen is a two-time LinkedIn “Top Voice on Management and Culture.” He is also a columnist on Inc.com and a contributor for CNBC and VentureBeat.

This story is part of the AIM Archive

This story is part of the AIM Institute Archive on Silicon Prairie News. AIM gifted SPN to the Nebraska Journalism Trust in January 2023. Learn more about SPN’s origin »

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2 responses to “Changing the minds of people who think good ideas can’t come from the middle states”

  1. Randy Bretz Avatar
    Randy Bretz

    Steve Kiene, here in Lincoln, Nebraska (about as middle USA as you can get) made the same point when he shared his idea about tech startups on the TEDxLincoln stage in 2011. Well worth catching Steve’s thoughts. https://youtu.be/3-Zpo-xlsIc

  2. Audrey Crane Avatar
    Audrey Crane

    Daniel Moss’ comment is as irritating to some of us coast-ers as it was to you!

    I am based in San Francisco (and have to admit, I don’t know my hacky from my sack), and think the most compelling idea here is not judgement but partnership. I travel almost monthly to Omaha, and deeply value my friendships and partnerships there. We’ve driven business to them and vice-versa. I pitch my Omaha partners as friendly, extremely knowledgeable, absolutely dependable, affordable compared to similar skillsets in Silicon Valley, and without the timezone or language barriers of offshore options. We are bringing attention to the great companies in the Midwest, learning from them, and enjoying sharing our knowledge with them too.

    My firm has clients we love and years-long relationships in Omaha and Indianapolis especially, and aside from onsite meetings in January, there is nothing we don’t appreciate about working with them. (And we’re happy to host in January! Well, and February too…!)

    I can’t do much about the unfortunate polarization in politics today, but happy to be connecting and collaborating from the West Coast to the Midwest, and we are both stronger for it!