When U.S. Sen. Todd Young recently sat down with our members at the Ivy Tech Fisher Building, he laid out two possible futures for the country.
In one, the rise of artificial intelligence leaves us disoriented and struggling to keep up, culturally, socially, economically and militarily. In the other, we meet the moment and open the door to a second American century. What stuck with me wasn’t the caution, but rather that he treated the outcome as a decision for the country and for communities like ours in Delaware County to make.
If the outcome is ours to decide, the place to start is knowing where our strength actually lives. Big wins matter, but as we’ve seen in Delaware County, what sets us apart is the one- and two-person shops that grow into something larger and choose to stay. Their owners live here, hire here, and reinvest here — and when the economy struggles, they’re the ones who stay and figure it out, because Delaware County is home.
Those roots are what carry a community like ours through change, whether that change is AI or a challenge we haven’t yet identified. The danger isn’t the change itself, but rather the assumption that we’ll adapt later, once the bigger places have sorted it out.
Waiting for later is exactly how communities get left behind. The places that thrive in the next decade will be the ones that chose early to lean in, train and build, while everyone else was still deciding what to believe.
That is why, in Delaware County, we should stop treating the future as a storm that will pass and start treating it as a plan we write.
For our part, the Chamber will keep bringing the people and conversations that matter to the members who need them and building the connections that keep a good business growing. We’ll push for the workforce development and training that lets a small Delaware County company compete with anyone, and we’ll keep backing the people willing to start something here and stay. We’re asking our members to lean in now, to experiment, to ask hard questions, and to claim their seat at the table.
Young said he didn’t believe America could lose this century unless we played our hand badly, and the same is true for Delaware County. We hold a far better hand than we tend to give ourselves credit for. I’m reminded each day of what we’re working with: a tradition of building, a well-trained workforce that knows how to do difficult things, and a business community that keeps showing up for the betterment of our community.
Let’s play it like we intend to win.
Elizabeth Rowray is the president and CEO of the Greater Muncie Chamber of Commerce.
This article originally appeared on Muncie Star Press: Op-ed: Delaware County’s place in the economy is our choice
Reporting by Elizabeth Rowray, Muncie Star Press / Muncie Star Press
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
By Elizabeth Rowray, Muncie Star Press | USA TODAY Network
