Gateway to High - Tech Heaven? - Industry Trend or Event

Industry Standard, The, August 14, 2000 by Robert S. Boynton

This worldview has made it difficult for outsiders to penetrate Salt Lake, which has in turn created economic problems. "Why do we lack the capital and infrastructure? The answer is culture," says John Griffin, a political economist at Brigham Young University currently completing The Silicon Desert Project, a comparative analysis of high-tech development in Colorado and Utah. "Corporate networks in Utah are generally closed: The insiders all know each other through the church and other community ties. So if you're a VC who wants to invest in this emerging high-tech region, it is easier to go to Colorado than Utah. If you're not Mormon you hit a real barrier."

The cultural role of Mormonism potentially creates as many problems as it solves. After all, not everybody is attracted by the Cleavers' values and spotless streets. Many Salt Lake companies say that they have trouble recruiting non-Mormons, especially those who are single. "There really aren't that many things to do around here if you are used to clubbing late into the night," says one dot-com executive. And Salt Lake's identity as the capital of the Mormon world can be uncomfortable for non-Mormons. "Every time you are in an airplane and tell the guy next to you that you're from Salt Lake, he asks if you're a Mormon. It's embarrassing," says a prominent non-Mormon businessman.

Just as outsiders aren't always thrilled with Mormon culture, a significant minority of Mormons are wary of technology and other aspects of modern life -- which makes Leavitt's political agenda a high-wire balancing act. Perhaps nothing better exemplifies Utah's complex cultural politics than the state's attitude toward polygamy. With an estimated 40,000 to 100,000 fundamentalist Mormons engaged in "plural marriages," this is no small matter. In one notorious incident, Leavitt -- a descendant, like most old Utah families, of a polygamist clan -- speculated last year that polygamy might even enjoy certain constitutional protections as a religious freedom. He soon corrected the gaff, but the rumor that he is "soft on polygamy" still makes the rounds.

On the campaign bus, Leavitt talks about Tom Friedman's study of globalization, The Lexus and the Olive Tree, a book he is so enamored of that he gave a copy to every governor and assigned it to his entire cabinet during a recent retreat. Traveling through Utah's small towns -- some of which have polygamist churches just blocks from schools with broadband Internet connections - one is strikingly aware that Utah is a microcosm of the struggle Friedman sees taking place between global innovation and local tradition. "The communities we are going through are rural, natural resource-based economies that are suddenly being subjected to global, macroeconomics they can't control," says Leavitt. "When I introduced the idea of the Utah-Silicon Valley alliance, there was an editorial in one paper saying that we don't want to be 'Silicon Valley Jr.' We like Utah just the way it is. Well, I like it the way it is, too. But I'd also like my children to be able to have a future here. So the clash between the Lexus and the olive tree is inevitable."