AOL Leader Touts Success of High-Tech
Herald Dispatch 10/25/00
Steve Case tells forum at Marshall rual areas can benefit from Internet
By Jim Ross
Huntington – Steve Case knows how companies founded to take advantage of the Internet can change the economic landscape.
"The big companies suddenly don’t have a guaranteed right to be successful in the future," said Case, chief executive officer of America Online.
Kodak and Xerox are two companies struggling in the face of advances in digital technology, he said.
Case’s own company is an example of his point of how new companies can dominate old ones. America Online started a mere 15 years ago, and now it’s ready to swallow the entertainment and publishing giant Time Warner.
Case was the featured speaker at the first West Virginia Forum on Technology and Innovation, organized by Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D-W.Va.. and held in the Joan C. Edwards Playhouse on the Marshall University campus Monday morning.
About 200 Marshall students and local business and government officials came to hear Case, and Rockefeller and others discuss how West Virginia must adapt to what is known as the New Economy.
Case was late and had to cut his speech short. He was to have landed at Tri-State Airport, bus was diverted to Yeager Airport in Charleston when Tri-State was fogged in. Because he had to leave for an important meeting in Virginia in the afternoon, he could speak only 15 minutes at the forum.
Rockefeller described the New Economy as a series of "massive and complex changes" in the economy as information and technology become increasingly important.
"If we don’t have the New Economy, we will find ourselves left behind in the dust," Rockefeller said. "If we do nothing, the New Economy will pass us by."
That means West Virginia will be as bad off as if it has never had the coal, chemical and natural gas industries, he said.
Monday’s forum was the first in a series Rockefeller plans to have around the state and was an overview of topics to be covered in future forums. The next is at West Virginia University on a date to be determined. It will focus on bringing the state’s traditional core industries into the New Economy through the use of technology.
The third forum will be on creating access to venture capital, and the fourth on improving work force development and education.
Case said rural areas can benefit from the New Economy, as small business is able to advertise its products and services internationally. But there is a danger that gap between the digital haves and have-nots can widen, he said.
Rural areas must be sure they have the same access to high-speed broadband and wireless access that urban areas do, he said.
When a Marshall student asked how West Virginia can attract businesses like AOL, Case replied that most of his company’s marketing and development workers are at company headquarters in northern Virginia. Content creators are dispersed around the country, partly because of acquisitions AOL has made, he said.
All customer support services are outside Virginia, he said. AOL looks at places with positive business climates and with people who are techmates and with people who are technically proficient or who can become technically proficient, he said. The company adds about one customer support center a year, he said.
The forum included a panel discussion. One member was an artist who lives in Fairmont and telecommutes to her job in San Francisco. One is a West Virginia native who started a software development firm in Austin, Texas, and who is moving it to West Virginia.
One is chief operating officer of a company that uses the Internet to help banks sell loans among themselves.
The fourth was Richard K. Riederer, chief executive officer of Weirton Steel Corp.
Weirton Steel was the first company in the metals industry to use the Internet to sell its products, Riederer said.
That effort led to the formation of metalsite.com, which is used by six companies to sell their metals online, he said.
Technology allows Weirton Steel to improve its supply chain, reduce transaction costs improve communication with customers, but it requires deep knowledge of the marketplace, he said.
Weirton Steel has also spent $800 million since 1990 for new equipment. Now, much of the plant is run by computer, he said. Some computer operators are 35-year employees who have been retrained, Riederer said.
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