When the Indiana Internet of Things (IOT) Lab, located in Fishers, brought-in executives from The Cook Group, a medical device firm headquartered in Bloomington, Indiana, you would think the subject would be the state of the medical device industry.  That was not the subject most on their minds.

Fishers Mayor Scott Fadness led the discussion featuring Cook Group Chairman Steve Ferguson and company president Pete Yonkman.

Ferguson told the assembled crowd that in the Bloomington area, there are 29,000 people lacking a high school diploma.  Cook decided to do something about finding qualified job candidates.

Rather than looking to government for a solution, Yonkman explained how Cook faced this issue.  The company hired people without a high school degree to work part-time at Cook, and set them up to go to school and get their high school equivalency certification.  For example, a part-timer would work in the morning, and head for school in the afternoon.    Then Cook worked with Ivy Tech and WGU (a university based in Indiana) to further their workers education once the high school degree was done.

“We went from having 75 people in our program to more than 1,200 in less than a year,” Yonkman said.  “We showed that the pent-up need is there for education if you take away the barriers.”

Mayor Fadness talked about a manufacturing firm in Shelby County that has $50 million in annual revenue but ran the entire operation with seven employees.  He cited data that shows Indiana’s manufacturing output continues to grow, but it requires fewer and fewer workers to produce the product.

The discussion also centered on the importance of corporate culture.

Indiana IOT Lab Founder John Wechsler introduces Mayor Fadness