Executive Summary
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Study highlights include the following:
Section 1: CEO Challenges and Issues
VIEW RESULTS
- Respondents rate corporate reputation and customer loyalty/retention as the two most important issues to their companies.
- They rate growing the business internationally and keeping pace with global competition as being the least important.
- They plan to add jobs during the next 18 months.
- They find having enough time, rising customer expectations, and keeping up with technology to be extremely challenging.
Section 2: Indiana’s Economic Climate
VIEW RESULTS
- Compared to neighboring states, respondents rate cost of living as being a strong advantage for Indiana while the education system is seen as being a strong disadvantage.
- They support the state’s initiatives regarding life science and information technology, and expect these two areas to grow over the next few years.
- They would like to see the state focus more on health care and mass transit.
Section 3: State’s Role in Economic Development
VIEW RESULTS
- Respondents think the state does a better job of developing business than it does of retaining business in Indiana.
- They believe improving education is the most critical issue in determining Indiana’s future economic development.
Section 4: Human Resources and Diversity
VIEW RESULTS
- Respondents report high demand for sales/marketing, information technology, and administrative/clerical workers in the next five years.
- They are greatly concerned about acquiring talented managers, and not very concerned about immigration issues.
- They agree that diversity at the highest levels is absent from Indiana companies.
Section 5: Education
VIEW RESULTS
- Respondents rate public and private universities in Indiana as very strong, and public primary education as weak.
- They provide similar ratings regarding these levels of education as adapting to the changing business climate.
Section 6: Information Technology
VIEW RESULTS
- Nearly two-thirds of respondents report their companies as having a formal policy regarding use of the Internet at work, but less than one-third report having a policy regarding employee-authored blogs.
- Fewer than half the respondents feel confident in evaluating or monitoring key IT leadership or staff members.
Section 7: Respondents and Their Organizations
VIEW RESULTS
What We Learned
The full report gives you insight and understanding about how the business executives in Indiana feel about their companies, their challenges and what can make Indiana a great place to do business. Our goal is to offer some viewpoints that may be different than your own and a greater understanding of what makes Indiana’s business community tick. We welcome your comments and suggestions as you review the complete report.
Future Plans
We plan to repeat this survey annually so that we may identify and track changes over time. While the basic structure and content of the survey will remain constant, we plan to make the project even more useful by implementing a few modifications.
First, we plan to increase the sample size by expanding the number and variety of sources containing required contact information. A larger sample will enable us to conduct more robust subgroup analyses.
Second, we will increase the geographic representation of the sample. This will enable us to assess more accurately the degree to which there are or are not significant and systematic regional differences within the state of Indiana.
Third, we will make a few alterations to the questionnaire itself. Some will reflect new issues as they arise, and others will provide more useful information by altering response categories to reflect actual variations in the population.
Conclusion
Although key attitudes, opinions, concerns and other information from Indiana’s business leaders have been revealed and clarified in this report, it is only the beginning.
Many of these opinions need to be measured over time. The state, the business community and the media can move us toward positive goals and necessary changes that our business leaders have identified to make us more competitive. The opinions of the key executives who responded will serve as a catalyst to make Indiana grow, prosper and become the driving and thriving economic force it can be.
We thank those who took the time to give us their opinions. We thank those of you who are reading this report. And we especially thank those of you who will take action or do something differently as a result of this survey.
