Inclusiveness at tech companies is good for investors

SAN FRANCISCO — Inclusiveness may be the best business plan for tech.

To get and keep the U.S. tech industry looking more like the country it calls home in the coming decades will require nothing less than a change of mind-set among tech executives and their hiring managers.

It will require tech recruiters in interview rooms across this country to step out of their comfort zone, the Rev. Jesse Jackson said during a meeting with USA TODAY editorial staff here Thursday.

Jackson, a Democratic Party candidate for president in 1984 and 1988, imagines millions of enlightened meetings between two economic entities: an inclusive mind on the hiring side of the table and a job candidate on the other side with the skills required for the position in question.

In a potential boon for tech investors, such a prevailing mind-set will almost surely be good for future business because the very markets served by consumer tech companies are changing as well.

Both here and overseas, the world is becoming darker in complexion and in most places its workforce is opening slowly but finally to women and minorities.

In the U.S., ethnic and racial minorities will be the majority of the population within a few decades.

That means more-diverse hiring practices represent a domestic investment opportunity that should be making tech executives, venture capitalists and other investors salivate from San Jose to San Francisco.

A new consumer market is waiting to be created.

For tech companies, it might be good to have at least an equal-weighted share of the workforce (statistically-speaking) able to embrace its changing culture – whether it be more-black, Hispanic, Asian or female.

"Inclusion leads to growth. The lack of it leads to stagnation," says Jackson, whose Rainbow PUSH coalition lobbied tech companies to release workforce-diversity figures.

A potential economic market exists -- one comprised of minorities of race, ethnicity and gender, among others, who have been so far poorly served by hiring practices in the tech industry.

Those ready to argue that either women or qualified candidates of color aren't out there for U.S.-based tech jobs may want to talk first to Silicon Valley entrepreneur Tristan Walker.

Walker, CEO of Walker Brands, a health-and-beauty product start-up based in Palo Alto, Calif., has been finding qualified workers for his growing company in places like the University of Maryland Baltimore County.

Doing so "sure as hell is a competitive advantage for us," as rival start-up firms are trying to outbid each other for the same narrow pool of talent coming out of so-called "elite" technical colleges, Walker said Thursday.

If large consumer tech companies don't want to have their lunch eaten by start-up CEOs like Walker, an African-American and former entrepreneur-in-residence at the nearby VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, they may want to partner up.

That's according to the man whose basketball skills helped make the Los Angeles Lakers among the most valuable teams in professional sports.

"If you're not in the community, you have to partner with someone to be effective," former NBA star and longtime AIDS survivor Earvin "Magic" Johnson told USA TODAY last month, before adding that he knows where to find qualified tech candidates.

"I've been doing this (minority outreach) for 35 years, for Best Buy, Aetna... on and on," Johnson said.

Of the job candidates he can find, Johnson says: "They all will be qualified... just give me a call," he said, addressing the tech industry.

Jackson has been at it longer than Magic, and he challenged the industry to go beyond better hiring practices to fund more STEM education in American schools.

"They have to imagine youth who are able to be taught these technologies," Jackson says, adding U.S. corporate tax policy should be overhauled to encourage investment in tech-training programs in the U.S.

Speaking to a diversity forum arranged by USA TODAY and hosted by Stanford University's Rock Center for Corporate Governance Thursday night, Jackson made his challenge public in the heart of Silicon Valley.

"I don't think there's anything the valley can't do… (there's) no excuse for Silicon Valley to be so segregated in the post-civil rights era," he said.

Given the changing demographics and ever-changing zeitgeist -- Silicon Valley's largest tech company, for example, is now led by a person who is openly gay and thus himself a member of a long-excluded minority -- we should all be optimistic that the challenge proposed by Jackson and others may be well-timed.

John Shinal has covered tech and financial markets for more than 15 years at Bloomberg, BusinessWeek,The San Francisco Chronicle, Dow Jones MarketWatch, Wall Street Journal Digital Network and others. Follow him on Twitter: @johnshinal.