MARCH/APRIL 2006 l exchangemagazine.com l 21 I t’s not every day that you encounter a fast-growing business that bases much of its success on a virtually unchanged, 50-year-old technology. Of course, it does not hurt that RDM also happens to have other products, and that the Waterloo company marries “cutting edge” technology with the venerable tool. RDM’s business is cheques. Perhaps that should be spelled “checks”, since much of the company’s business is done in the United States. Most of the publicly-traded company’s products involve MICR, a technology that was developed in the 1950s. Take a look at a cheque. You will see a row of numbers along the bottom, start- ing in the left lower corner. You can read those numbers – but through the magic of the MICR system, so can a machine. The same font technology is used on bank deposit slips, telephone and hydro bills, and other financial documents. MICR is actually a font involving a specific printing process. It stands for “Magnetic Ink Character Recognition.” You read the number with your eyes; a machine scans the number because it is printed with magnetic toner in the ink. A scanner converts the individual numbers to a wave form, thus “reading” the cheque. When RDM was formed in 1987, MICR allowed the machine to read and sort cheques; today, the applications of the technology are much wider. Three founders RDM was founded as a private com- pany named Research, Development and Manufacturing Corporation. Founders were Bob Nally, Pat Pavlik and Jim Akister. Nally had been director of engineering at NCR; that company had made Waterloo a world centre for cheque products, according to current RDM President and CEO, Douglas New- man. NCR manufactures machines that large banks use to process cheques. From his days at NCR, Nally knew that the biggest challenge with MICR technology was quality control. If a cheque was printed with flaws, scanners would not be able to properly read the MICR numbers. A niche had been identi- fied, and Newman says, “RDM was founded to provide quality control equipment to make sure these MICR fonts were printed to standard. That was Old Technology Blends with Cutting Edge at RDM EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT CHEQUE PROCESSING FEATURE STORY BY PAUL KNOWLES Old Technology Blends with Cutting Edge at RDM EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT CHEQUE PROCESSING RDM President and CEO Douglas Newman PHOTOGRAPHY: JON ROHR
Transcript
MARCH/APRIL 2006 l exchangemagazine.com l 21
It’s not every day that you encountera fast-growing business that basesmuch of its success on a virtually
unchanged, 50-year-old technology. Ofcourse, it does not hurt that RDM alsohappens to have other products, andthat the Waterloo company marries“cutting edge” technology with the venerable tool.
RDM’s business is cheques. Perhapsthat should be spelled “checks”, sincemuch of the company’s business isdone in the United States. Most of thepublicly-traded company’s productsinvolve MICR, a technology that wasdeveloped in the 1950s.
Take a look at a cheque. You will see arow of numbers along the bottom, start-ing in the left lower corner. You can readthose numbers – but through the magicof the MICR system, so can a machine.The same font technology is used onbank deposit slips, telephone and hydrobills, and other financial documents.
MICR is actually a font involving aspecific printing process. It stands for“Magnetic Ink Character Recognition.”You read the number with your eyes; amachine scans the number because it isprinted with magnetic toner in the ink. Ascanner converts the individual numbersto a wave form, thus “reading” thecheque. When RDM was formed in1987, MICR allowed the machine to readand sort cheques; today, the applicationsof the technology are much wider.
Three foundersRDM was founded as a private com-
pany named Research, Developmentand Manufacturing Corporation.Founders were Bob Nally, Pat Pavlik andJim Akister. Nally had been director ofengineering at NCR; that company hadmade Waterloo a world centre forcheque products, according to currentRDM President and CEO, Douglas New-man. NCR manufactures machines thatlarge banks use to process cheques.
From his days at NCR, Nally knewthat the biggest challenge with MICRtechnology was quality control. If acheque was printed with flaws, scannerswould not be able to properly read theMICR numbers. A niche had been identi-fied, and Newman says, “RDM wasfounded to provide quality controlequipment to make sure these MICRfonts were printed to standard. That was
Old TechnologyBlends withCutting Edge at RDMEVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUTCHEQUE PROCESSING
FEATURE STORY
BY PAUL KNOWLES
Old TechnologyBlends withCutting Edge at RDMEVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUTCHEQUE PROCESSING
RDM President and CEODouglas Newman
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what the company did for the first 10years of its existence.”
Changing timesHowever, financial transactions have
changed enormously since 1997. Attimes, cheques seem to be a thing of thepast, with internet banking, directdeposit, and other developments. Howhas that affect RDM?
In fact, RDM is growing in leaps andbounds. Newman says the company did$6 million in revenue in 2000; in the 2005fiscal year, revenue totalled a record-breaking $19.5 million, well in excess ofmid-year forecasts. This was an increaseof 12% over 2004 revenue of $17.3 mil-lion. Gross 2005 profits were $8.7 million,or 45% of revenues, compared to $7.1million (41%) in 2004. Net earnings were$757,000, or $.04 per share, up from $.01per share in 2005. Newman attributed therecord-setting year to strong perform-ance in all RDM sectors, including Elec-tronic Payment Solutions.
The CEO – who should know hisfinancials, since he first joined the com-pany in 1996 as CFO – predicts 2010 rev-enue of $50 million.
RDM now employs 100 people; itoccupies two buildings, and has justexpanded its space in the second one. Inan industry that seems to be seeing lostvolume – the paper cheque business –RDM has found ways to grow.
Three businessesNewman explains that RDM is
involved in three related but fairly dis-tinct businesses. The first is QualityAssurance, a direct line from the found-ing fathers of the business. The second isDigital Imaging – RDM produces chequescanners that are wildly used in businessapplications, especially retail. The thirdand newest business effort involvesITMS – Image and Transaction Manage-ment System.
RDM’s clients include the majority ofthe ten largest banks in the UnitedStates, and one of its biggest customersis the United States Treasury.
Newman understands that papercheques are a declining species, but henotes that everything is relative. While itis true that the number of paper chequesis dropping by 4% to 5% a year in theUnited States, the fact remains that“right now, 37 billion cheques are writ-ten every year in the United States.” InCanada, despite all the on-line banking,there are still about 1.5 billion chequeswritten annually.
Newman notes that “cheques are abig factor in the U.S.; Americans lovethem.” So even anticipating some annu-al drop in cheque-writing, Newman says,“We think there will be 27 billioncheques written per year by 2010.”
He argues that a lower number ofcheques may be good news for RDM,since much of their business involvescreating equipment that scans chequesand converts the cheques into electronicpayments, thus eliminating labour costs.If there are fewer cheques, he says, thecost per item goes up – “more reason totake these pieces of paper and electroni-fy them.” RDM is ready.
Labour intensiveEven if total numbers are dropping
slightly, the secret to RDM’s success liesin the fact thatcheques are bothpopular, andlabour intensive.It has been esti-mated thatcheques that arehandled manuallyactually aretouched by 10 dif-ferent people onthe way throughthe process. Aswell, says New-man, ‘“everycheque you’veever written hasbeen microfilmed or microfiched.”
Cheques cause a lot of work. Newmanpoints out, “most of the cost with acheque is handling the piece of paper.” SoRDM’s second brainstorm, after qualitycontrol of cheque printing (which is still abig part of the business) was to createand supply scanners that would initiallyrecord the cheque. Scanners – now oftenwith other applications as well – repre-sent the second arm of RDM business.
Scanning sounds relatively simple, butwhen Newman leads you through thestory of the cheques, complexitiesabound. One of the major problems fac-ing scanner producers a few years agowas the trend toward personalizedcheques – bright, colourful, garish per-sonalized cheques. Scanning them, stor-ing them, transmitting their images,required enormous amounts of comput-er memory. So new standards weredeveloped limiting the brightness andthe contrast on the background imageson cheques. The intent is to allow picto-rial cheques which, when scanned,
appear as white background with theimportant numbers still shown.
RDM was there, developing IQ (anImage Qualifier) to analyze cheques todetermine if the background image waswithin acceptable parameters.
All of these developments happenedprior to 1995. Newman says the compa-ny was doing well when it went public,in 1995/96, but “when you become apublic company, growth becomes impor-tant.” RDM – the official name of thenew, public company – had a lock onMICR and IQ quality control, with “virtu-ally no competition”, but while this pro-vided “a steady, profitable business forus,” once most potential customers hadthe systems, growth was more of a chal-lenge. And most potential clients had
become clients – RDM product is sold in25 countries, although “the bulk of dollarsales are into the U.S.”
Not every RDM venture was wildlysuccessful. A joint pilot project with IBMand Sun Microsystems was carried outto test eliminating paper cheques entire-ly. This was called an e-cheque project,and the pilot projects were run with theU.S. Treasury Department.
The pilots worked well, but RDM’spartners pulled out. The e-cheque projectwas dead... but RDM’s connection andcontracts with the Treasury Departmentwere just beginning. It would be hard toclassify the discontinued project as a fail-ure, given the enormous, positive fall-out.
As well, the e-cheque research anddevelopment led to RDM founding a Sili-con Valley subsidiary named XIGN; RDMcontinues to own 15% of XIGN today.
RDM has stayed very involved in theissue of using electronics to lessen thecost of handling cheques. From 1996,the company has been involved in R&Dand production of equipment to handle
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The RDM assembly team
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cheques electronically, including con-verting cheques into electronic pay-ments. Today, says Newman, “we proba-bly have 80% market share.”
The company produces and marketsequipment to do this, but Newman notesthat government regulations have made itdifficult – until recently. At one time, onlyprivate consumer cheques could be con-verted into electronic payments. Howev-er, the tragedy of September 11, 2001changed that. When all the airplanes inNorth American airspace were groundedfor a week, so too were millions of dollarsin corporate cheques. Newman has heardestimates that “$75 billion to $80 billion ofpayments were stopped.” The economicimpact was tremendous. This led to newregulations approving conversion of busi-ness cheques; now permitted are IRDs –Image Replacement Documents. Thischange, says Newman, “is very profoundfor us in the industry.”
SoftwareRDM combines production of hard-
ware and software. The companyemploys mechanical and electrical engi-neers as well as software engineers.Newman recalls early days of softwaredevelopment with some amusement –around 1999, RDM became aware of aneed for software to allow their scannerclients to archive cheque images. Theydeveloped a suite of software packages –and “I think we sold six of them.”
The company realized that theirclients wanted the archiving service, butdidn’t want to be responsible to run it.So RDM shifted gears and created anarchive service that is a major part of thebusiness to this day. In fact, at one pointUS Treasury archives – including somearmed forces and NATO cheque archives– were located on a server in Waterloo.Eventually, the Treasury took the servicein-house, moving it to a secure locationin the U.S., but the relationship withRDM continues to be strong, and awhole section of the RDM engineeringdepartment is dedicated to work withthe U.S. Treasury. “We have a very goodrelationship,” says Newman.
Some of RDM’s applications, nowused in solutions for many clients, havetheir genesis in work for the U.S. govern-ment, including the Image and Transac-tion Management System that is now amajor arm of RDM business. This tech-nology allows more sophisticated elec-tronic cheque transactions, includingidentification of cheque cashers whohave “opted out” of one form of electron-
ic transfer, as well as identification ofcheque cashers with a history ofbounced cheques.
RDM has targetted banks as a majorclient; the strategy is “to go after large U.S.banks and get them to adopt our system astheir product offering to their customers.”The strategy has worked – the majority ofthe top ten U.S. banks use RDM, includingJ.P. Morgan-Chase, US Bank, and WellsFargo. In all, “over 11 banks are using oursystem,” says Newman.
Because RDM operates the system,this is a financial win-win for the compa-
ny, with a double revenue stream, fromhardware sales and transaction fees.
Newman says that RDM has to dealwith constantly changing technology –in spite of the reliability of the 50-year-old MICR. But changing technology isboth “a challenge and an opportunity,”he says, because RDM is ready and ableto keep much more up to date thanmost customers can be. In addition toselling hardware, software and on-siteservices, RDM is also, he says, “sellingexpertise.”
And the clients are buying.
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24 l COMPANY PROFILE
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Often we get so immersed in daily problems facing our business, we lose sight ofthe simple things we can do to dramatically improve our performance. You’veread the books, studied the cases, and tried a half dozen different processes
claiming they’ll invigorate your organiza-tion and improve your bottom line.
But you don’t have time to followthrough with these programs, or you don’thave the resources to drive them. Andeven if you do, finding the right personwho understands these programs and canfollow through, is very difficult or almostimpossible.
So, when customers are screamingabout poor quality, your accountant iswarning you about the impending cash-flow crunch, and you can’t get anything out thedoor on time, what should you do? You could run and hide in the mountains of inven-tory, or maybe rest on the shipping dock for a few days where no one will find you.
I think I have a better idea. It’s guaranteed to improve your situation, and to be a lotmore fun than the current course you’re on. You won’t have to study three nights aweek for four years to understand it, andit won’t cost $250,000 for a three monthorganizational assessment to expose it.You won’t have to worry about theflavour of the month and it won’t strikefear into the hearts of your long termemployees.
The idea has been around forever.Every once in a while we need remindingof how powerful it is. All of us have usedit many times before, and in many caseswe don’t even realize it – we simply takeit for granted. For some reason or anoth-er it becomes most difficult to use whenwe need it most.
Delegation allows us to leverage ourtime by working through others. It’s a wayof spreading out the load, bringing addi-tional resources to bear on your mostpressing issues. Those who delegate wellgenerally meet their objectives and experi-ence much less stress in their jobs. Thosewho do not, or cannot, tend to worklonger hours, accomplish less and gohome feeling frustrated and overloaded.
Delegation is also an excellent way todevelop those identified in the successionplanning process. Providing key employ-ees with plenty of opportunity to test theirdecision making and people manage-ment skills will help them improve, andhelp you to evaluate your potential suc-cessor in a controlled environment. You
A Simple Start to ProcessImprovementDelegation allows us to leverage our time
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MANUFACTURING METHODS control the amount of pressure they areunder, you decide what accounts theywork on, and you manage the risk asso-ciated with their learning by choosingthe projects you delegate.
Effective delegation requires someupfront work. Ensure you haveaddressed these few crucial compo-nents and you’re on your way to effec-tively leveraging your time and improv-ing your organization’s performance.The current work load will get spreadout, and you’ll ensure the future successof your company by developing peoplewho can cover for you when you areaway, and move into your position asyou move up in the organization, orretire.
Clear objectivesIt’s unrealistic to ask someone to take
responsibility for an outcome if theydon’t understand its significance. Askingone of your reports to take responsibilityfor getting the “Johnson” order out ontime, without ensuring she has the req-uisite background information, could becatastrophic. Is she expected to make dowith the tools and equipment she has?Is the “Johnson” account a strategicaccount that should take precedenceover other customers? Can she author-
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ize overtime? Is she aware this shipmentmust be shipped to the downtown facili-ty? Does she know the lead hand in themachine shop will be off on Thursday?
Delegating responsibility is a bigresponsibility. If the objectives are notclear, and the boundaries aren’t fullyunderstood, the task is unlikely to becompleted to your satisfaction. The resultcan be unsatisfied customers, and thefrustration created for both parties willmake subsequent efforts more difficult.
Room to moveOnce requisite background informa-
tion has been provided and clear expec-tations are set, don’t follow up with stepby step instructions that your delegatesimply executes without thinking. Thepoint of delegation is to spread the load.If you’ve already done all the work, andmade all the plans and decisions, thenyou’re not delegating, you’re instructing.
Spoonfeeding your delegate willreveal little about how they operateunder pressure or make decisions.Understand your reasons for delegating.You are trying to offload work to allowyou to do a more effective job on somekey project, while training and evaluat-ing an employee with potential.
ChallengesGive your reports the opportunity to
learn and grow. Provide them with chal-lenging tasks that require them to makedecisions based on the backgroundinformation they have. Providing themwith appropriate challenges and supportwill energize them and increase their jobsatisfaction. Energized employees take amore active roll in making the organiza-tion successful and have much greatercapacity to satisfy customers. Allowthem the chance to think and make mis-takes, but be prepared to support andencourage people when they do makemistakes, and recognize and praise themwhen they are successful.
You’re too busy to get all of your workdone and you don’t have time to train?Then delegate. The difference may seemsubtle, but true delegation is very power-ful. Instead of taking average individualsand training them in every aspect of thetask, and preparing them for everypotential outcome or situation, we takeindividuals with potential, brief them onthe situation and the objectives, andallow them to use the facts and dataavailable to make their own decisions.This increases your capacity rather thanincreasing the demand for your time –exactly what we attempt to do in anyLean implementation.
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Director OrientationNow that you have new directors, what are you going to do with them?
BY JOHN T. D INNER
GOOD GOVERNANCE
Director orientation is a lot like breakfast. Everyone knows it’s important,but it’s often rushed and lacking in substance. I regularly hear from direc-tors about ineffective orientation.
With annual meeting in full swing, many organizations will be welcomingnew directors to their boards. Now what are you going to do with them? Moreoften than not, very little. For new directors out there, be prepared to feel ill-pre-
pared for your first board meeting.Recognizing the lack of quality direc-
tor integration among issuers, the Cana-dian Securities Administrators havegiven prominence to director orienta-tion in the governance guidelines intro-duced last June.
Regulators want issuers to ensure allnew board members fully understandthe role of the board and its commit-tees, as well as the contribution individ-
ual directors are expected to make (including, in particular, the commitment oftime and resources the issuer expects from its directors). All new directorsshould understand the nature and operation of the issuer's business.
While this policy is clearly directed to publicly traded companies, the impor-tance of new director orientation spans sectors and organizations of every sizeand scope. The principles of effectiveorientation highlighted here are rele-vant to every board, but must beadapted and implemented to addresstheir unique attributes.
The bottom line is, educated direc-tors make for more valuable boardmembers, better able to provide wisecounsel and direction. Director orien-tation needs to be seen as an invest-ment in a critically important corpo-rate asset.
All of the governance reform overthe past decade and the resourcesand time expended in developing andimplementing new and better boardprocesses can be rendered useless ifnew directors are not properly induct-ed. While the board structural andprocess issues are all essential piecesof the good governance puzzle,underpinning these are the need for aboardroom and governance culturewhere new directors are welcomed,oriented, valued, and respected.Developing new board members towhere they become valued contribu-tors is a significant challenge requir-ing a strategically designed process toensure individual success in theboardroom.
But where to start? Equipping thenew recruit with a basic understand-
ing of how your organization governsitself and its business focus are foun-dational. While many boards fall intothe trap of replicating managementskills and experience on the board,director independence guidelinesmean that, increasingly, new directorswill be recruited from other sectorswith little or no industry or board-room experience. It’s hard to con-tribute to discussion and decision-making if you don’t know the busi-ness. So, you can init iat ive theprocess by providing new directorswith external consultant reports,books, trade journals and websites,and other useful resources.
While general information is valu-able and essential, director orienta-tion must be tai lored to the newboard member’s specific needs andthe board’s requirements. They mustreflect that director, on that board, inthat company, and in that industry.
Directors need to be briefed on theorganization’s core functions andbusiness drivers, and industry devel-opments. New directors should beprovided insights into key client rela-tionships and the organization’s posi-tion in the industry – its strengths andweaknesses, along with competitive
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threats and opportunities.One-on-one time, on-site with each
member of the senior managementteam is essential, with additional timewith the chief financial officer tomake sure new directors gain comfortlevel with relevant financial informa-tion and accounting rules. Having theopportunity to communicate directlywith those who are giving direct lead-ership to running the business pro-vides invaluable insights.
In preparation for site visits andmanagement meetings, backgroundmaterials should be provided to newdirectors well in advance so they areprepared to ask questions that willhelp close knowledge gaps. The agen-da should focus on the business froma strategic perspective, with plenty oftime available for informal exchangesof information and questions, asopposed to formal, one-sided presen-tations.
An effective orientation programshould also introduce the “softer” sideof the board: its culture, the relationshipwith management, group dynamics andother governance “informalities”.
This can be achieved through meet-ings with the board chair and moresenior directors who can help estab-lish rapport and set expectationsaround director performance. One wayto tackle this side of director orienta-tion is for established board membersto mentor new recruits through easilyaccessible off-line advice.
Organizations also need to investin building the board team throughplanned social interaction. This canbe easily included as part of off-sitemeetings where significant companyoperations are located. These occa-sions can be used for business unitreviews, as well as providing moreconcentrated time for board membersto get to know their board colleagues.
Effective director orientation clear-ly doesn’t just happen. Organizationsneed to develop the means to proac-tively identify director developmentalneeds. Here, the board chair or gover-nance committee has a critical role toplay in making sure the potential newdirectors bring to the boardroom isleveraged as fully as possible.
Just like other corporate assets,there needs to be a planned and con-certed effort to develop new directorsto achieve good governance andboard excellence. Effective directororientation – it’s the breakfast ofboard champions.
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Ihave been keenly interested in the various local initiatives to revitalize our urbancores. From my experiences working with local municipalities envisioning, plan-ning, building and redeveloping our cores, I have found we often throw money at
projects that really do not contribute towards the actual revitalization of our down-towns. Too often, we mistake investing in consumption for investing in production.
Downtown revitalization is not just about building another high-end retail mall,recreation centre, restaurant, expensiveloft condo, or cultural facility. Thesedevelopments are nice, but they are moreabout buying into a lifestyle than creatinglivelihoods. Sure, they will bring morebodies into the downtowns’ streets; butmore bodies is not enough to pay forthese developments, nor would this fun-damentally impact the ability of thedowntown cores to generate the scale ofeconomic and cultural activity needed to
sustain and ensure future growth and prosperity. Downtown revitalization first has to be about investing in peoples’ livelihoods
by growing our community’s economic and cultural capacity. We need to build onall the cultural, social, and economicactivities already happening within ourcities and generate greater opportuni-ties to apply them. We must create themeans to pay for these projects, anddevelop the social and economicframework with which people caninteract to exchange goods, services,and ideas. We need to invest in talent,nurturing our individual and collectivepotential as residents and as a com-munity to ensure that people can – andwill – stay here, and be able to prosper.
The New York Times described adying town in the rural United States:
“Not long ago, people in this spiritedtown made things that the rest of theworld wanted to buy. There was acheese factory churning out mozzarellafrom the milk of Nebraska cows forPizza Hut toppings; a cement plant atthe edge of town; and dozens of smallstores offering the forgotten retail art ofpersonal service. These operations pro-vided good jobs and a middleclass…They are all gone. The factoriesare empty: too remote and not prof-itable enough, the owners said. Thestores are dead: unable to compete aftercustomers moved out and discountchains – like Wal-Mart – moved in.”
The article suggested that prosper-ous city centres thrive when they are
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centres of production filling a globaleconomic need. They are not rewardedfor how much or how well they canconsume – they are rewarded for whatthey produce. When the productionstops, cities lose their economies, theirsense of purpose, their identities.
I remember when our downtowncores were busy with companies likeSeagram’s, Kaufmann’s, B.F. Good-erich, Globe Furniture, Tiger Brand,and a host of others producing goodsthe rest of the world wanted – and paidfor. What we did in our downtownsdefined who we were as a community– what we were about.
Our core areas are no longer thecentres of production they once were.With globalization, jobs in our manu-facturing and service sectors will beoutsourced to countries like China andIndia, and we must look seriously athow we will replace the economicactivities central to our prosperity. Wemust seriously consider how we willattract and retain talent, insteadexporting that talent to places like Sili-con Valley, New York, Shanghai, oreven Toronto, if we are going to con-tinue to power the innovation andenterprise that is the driving forcebehind our area’s emergence as a
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With the fanfare surrounding U.S. corporate scandals subsiding, Canadianlawmakers are implementing investor protection legislation, quite similarto American legislation. However, Canada seems to be moving ahead of
the U.S. in an apparent attempt to show the world that Canadian securities regula-tors can be as zealous and tough as their American counterparts. A number of new
investor protection measures within Bill198 (the Canadian equivalent to Sar-banes Oxley in the U.S.) become effectiveJanuary 1, 2006.
One of the underpinnings of the newrules is a desire to make corporate execu-tives personally liable for misrepresenta-tions (whether a result of fraud, error, orhonest mistake by themselves or their sub-ordinates) in the securities filings and pub-lic statements of Canadian public compa-
nies. Where a misrepresentation occurs in a “Core Document” like a Prospectus,Annual Information Form, Financial Statements, or MD&A, investors need not provethe executive(s) knew of the misrepresentation, participated in the misrepresentation,
30 l exchangemagazine.com l MARCH/APRIL 2006
Keeping the Promise for aStrong Economy?Or discouraging corporate leaders from getting involved?
BY J IM KOPPERSON
PUBLIC MARKETS
JIM KOPPERSON IS
CHIEF FINANCIAL
OFFICER, SOLAR
GROUP, ATS
AUTOMATION TOOLING
SYSTEMS INC.
leading-edge economy.The partnerships between the cities,
the college and the universities to investin core area revitalization hold muchpromise. We need to go beyond build-ing downtown schools and campuses.We need to capitalize on one of thegreatest collective strengths within ourcommunity – the unique legacy of fos-tering talented and creative individualswith the capacity to transform innova-tion into enterprise. We have an incredi-ble tradition of innovators and entrepre-neurs who have stayed, prospered, andenriched our communities culturallyand economically.
The revitalization of our city centreswill demand that we engage our pres-ent-day and future innovators, entre-preneurs and community leaders tostay in our community, to pursue theirfortunes and make a home for them-selves. It’s not just getting their atten-tion and attracting their wallets; but it’sabout capturing their imaginations,moving their hearts and inspiring themto want to stay and help shape ourcities and our downtowns to reflecttheir ambitions, aspirations and dreamsto make the world a better place andcreate a better life for us all.
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