Mississippi of the Midwest? It'll happen unless Hoosiers embrace change.

• Author: Tobias, Randall
• Position: Last Word

The sawmill owned by my great-great-grandfather, David Tobias, may have been the most profitable investment our family ever made. It supported him for half a century and it still pays dividends today by teaching his descendants--and anyone else who cares to listen--the most vital of all business lessons: Change is inevitable. Ignore it at your peril.

I received this wisdom when I was 7 years old and living in the tiny farming town of Remington. My father worked at a bank and my mother was a schoolteacher. They gave me a good, middleclass upbringing plus solid values and endless encouragement.

And they also took me, in 1949, to see the mill--or rather, its remains. Though it had been reduced to a few neglected foundation stones scattered along the bank of the Muscatatuck River, it still had a great deal to say about how to live in an ever-shifting world.

Its story began shortly after my great-great grandfather arrived from Wales in 1849. He acquired a small plot on the Jennings-Scott county line, built a waterwheel and used it to saw timber and mill grain. But after he had enjoyed decades of prosperity, the world changed. Steam technology pushed his water-powered operation out of the picture. So the family adapted, renting farmland in northern Benton County and carving out a living there for another 50 years. Then change caught up with them again. In my father's time the land could no longer support all of us, so some--Dad included--found other professions. No one complained. It was just the way things were. Times changed, and to prosper they had to change, too.

The mill is a ruin, but the Tobias family remains strong. We adapted and survived.

Of course my family's saga is in no way special. Over the last two centuries millions of Hoosiers have made their way both by cherishing traditional values and by embracing technology's newest innovations. It's how things are done.

That is, until recently.

Radical change is once more at hand. A way of life--large-scale, heavy manufacturing--is dying around us. It's being replaced by a high-tech, globalized economy in which Hoosiers must compete not just with the people next door (Michigan, Illinois and Ohio), but with North Carolina and...