Along with the news today that HJ Heinz is laying off 350
staff members at Pittsburgh headquarters is a less noted item about the
purchase by Facebook of a local high tech startup, Mobile Technologies. Mobile Technologies developed a product
called Jibbigo that is a translation service application which can be used on
your smartphone. I don’t need to go into
details of why this could be a very important piece of technology for any large
social media platform, like Facebook.
My problem is the statement by Mobile Technologies
founders who spun out of Carnegie Mellon: “once the deal has closed, many of us
will be joining the company at their headquarters in Menlo Park, California.” You can rest assured that given the size of
Mobile Technologies, all of their current staff will transfer to Menlo
Park. So why can’t Facebook, like
Google, establish a Pittsburgh engineering office? This “brain drain” of sorts, which has
happened time and again over a generation in Pittsburgh, has got to stop.
I fully comprehend that high tech must be fluid and respond
to opportunities as they present themselves.
That ability lays the groundwork, the very ecosystem, for future success
and innovations. But especially for
those enterprises coming out of CMU there has been too much of a history of
innovative companies grown on their campus only to be removed to more
“glamorous” locations as soon as the dollars beckon. This has got to stop.
I don’t have an answer for this and in all reality there
is no “answer” for the cycle of job creation and flow. It’s a sign of a healthy environment when an
area like Pittsburgh repeatedly produces innovative ideas and enterprises. And it’s only natural that the best and the
brightest, be they people or ideas or companies, migrate to where they’re most
appreciated: that is, where the capital to foster growth is located. However, I would like to see more leadership
from “the top”, by which I mean the top of the particular organization in Pittsburgh where
these creative enterprises are formed.
In this particular case, as in so many recent others, that top is the
leadership at Carnegie Mellon University.
What is CMU doing to foster Pittsburgh’s future growth besides taking in
tuition payments and spitting out high value employees for Boston, Seattle and
the Silicon Valley?
Look for me to follow up this piece with something
addressed to CMU’s incoming President.
