Will Northwest Arkansas ramp up?

Successful businesses spawn–and depend on–other businesses. The scale of Walmart’s success has changed the face of Northwest Arkansas and spilled over to some extent in to adjacent areas. What next?

Matt Fifer and Grace Calloway sketch out a scenario of an astounding escalation in creation of opportunities for building on Walmart’s success: The Boom Ahead–Why Northwest Arkansas Could be the Next Silicon Valley.

Matt’s own career exemplifies what he’s writing about. I met Matt about five years ago, when he asked me to assist him with a small real estate deal in the Table Rock Lake area. He told me that he grew up in Stone County, Missouri, and had graduated from Reeds Spring high school. He worked for Walmart several years after college and rose through the ranks. He left Walmart not long before I met him and started a business called 8th & Walton, which teaches how to do business with Walmart. That business has grown steadily.

As this essay points out, if you can do business with Walmart as a vendor or service provider, you probably have the ability to do business with other large companies. Because so many companies located in Northwest Arkansas have honed their skills in product development and marketing by learning to do business with Walmart, the next stage may be for venture capitalists to move in and provide the funding that will allow many new efforts to succeed.