Miami has long wanted to be counted alongside the burgeoning technology centers of New York, Boston and, probably the most notable of all, Silicon Valley. For South Florida, the effort has been a series of lurches, quick sprints and dead stops, spurred on by a business climate that rewards entrepreneurs.
It is that entrepreneurial spirit that allowed the tech community here to continue to grow despite the South Florida economy suffering disproportionately more than other regions around the country. And it’s that same scrappy, bootstrap mentality that perhaps is holding the region back from realizing its ambitions.
Nowhere is that more apparent than in Miami’s struggle to forge an identity for itself as a technology leader.
Various attempts have been made to brand the region under the moniker Silicon Beach, in hopes of stealing some of the gleam from the Valley and suffusing it with Miami’s sex appeal. Those efforts have consumed a lot of hours of debate without a lot of traction to show for it.
“This isn’t Silicon Valley, and that’s fine,” says Kevin M. Levy, who leads the technology and entrepreneurial company practice for the law firm Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart PA.
Levy echoes other business and thought leaders here who say that the region’s identity is still being forged and that the focus instead should be on fostering startups and providing resources.
On that front, progress has been made in the form of research institutes such as Scripps Florida, the University of Miami’s Life Science and Technology Park as well as UM’s entrepreneur and innovator resource center, the Launch Pad, and organizations such as Refresh Miami, the South Florida Technology Alliance and Social Media Club South Florida.
Where is the growth? It’s not in manufacturing chips and computers. There is a robust biotech industry in South Florida and homegrown consulting services that are making the region less reliant on imported expertise. Telecommunications, too, has been strong, with the NAP of the Americas and Spain-based telecom giant Telefonica providing enormous bandwidth and infrastructure to the hemisphere and further solidifying the area’s claim as a gateway to the Americas.
One recent evening in July, a few dozen entrepreneurs crowded into a Design District restaurant to hear a panel on patents and intellectual property moderated by Seth Elliott, who, along with Alex de Carvalho, co-founded Miami’s Startup Forum. The two men are in agreement that the diversity of Miami’s tech community — which ranges from bloggers and content creators to programmers, engineers and enterprises large and small — is one of the area’s main strengths. They see the struggle for identity as incidental to a culture change in Miami.
“You see many more people interacting with one another and sharing ideas [and expertise,]” says Elliott, who is a partner at the management consulting firm Apheleon Group.
He says the coming-of-age moment for Miami will be when the region produces its first $100 million technology phenomenon, such as social media darling Foursquare.
De Carvalho isn’t sure a tech phenom is necessary, though he says one of Miami’s main challenges is modifying the current competition-at-all-costs culture to one of cooperation or at least more cooperative cohesion toward shared goals.
That’s slowly happening, both men agree.
Ulises I. Orozco, a principal at Miami-based Ecient Group and promoter of the Silicon Beach brand, says he is proof positive of what Elliott and de Carvalho are espousing. With a background in corporate finance, Orozco decided to form a technology venture four years ago at a time when the Miami tech scene was hard to find.
“What I’m noticing now is that people are becoming more and more connected and meeting others with completely different backgrounds and skill sets, which is sort of refreshing because if you go to San Francisco, you don’t necessarily see that collaboration between like-minded people,” Orozco says.
William Plasencia is a longtime business journalist and communications and media consultant based in Miami. Find out more about Will on his website: www.willplasencia.com.
