Mayor Cavalier Johnson’s desire to grow Milwaukee’s population to one million is a teaching moment for the region. And a building project that needs better footings.

Comparing Milwaukee with Indianapolis will illustrate. The cold, hard truth is that Milwaukee (pop. 569,330) is shrinking and Indy (pop. 882,039) is growing.

Indy grows even more — nearly 22% — during the day, suggesting economic activity that attracts people into the city for their jobs. Milwaukee grows by only about 5%, says Marc Levine, founding director of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Center for Economic Development.

The difference — you can see it in the cities’ skylines — is that Indy collaborates on big initiatives and enjoys the influence of tech company founders.

Indy has three hotel buildings — JW Marriott, Hilton and Conrad — among its tallest 15; Milwaukee has one: the Potawatomi Casino Hotel.

Amateur sports push accelerated growth

Indy’s hotels are a result of the push then-Mayor Dick Lugar started in the late 1970s to make it the amateur sports capital of the world.

Consider the collaboration that lured the NCAA headquarters. Jack Swarbrick, then-chairman of Indiana Sports Corp., and Randy Tobias, then-chairman of Lilly Corp., convened about 75 business leaders at Lilly. No one left until everyone had been heard and the group had figured out the necessary support.

“I don’t know of another city in America that works like that,” James T. Morris, vice chairman of Pacers Sports and Entertainment, recalled years later in an article in American Outlook.

More:Here's how Milwaukee can reach Mayor Cavalier Johnson's ambitious goal to grow to 1 million people

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Wisconsin’s attempt to lure the Intel computer chip factory that’s now being built in Ohio didn’t work like that. State and local economic development officials kept their efforts a secret from many in the business community, cut out the two business executives who’d initially approached Intel about considering Wisconsin, and didn’t reach out to the computer science researchers in Madison who often collaborate with Intel.

Indiana Sports Corp., founded in 1979, has filled hotel rooms by hosting more than 500 national and international sporting events. But there’s more. Indy’s success at becoming an amateur sports center revived its downtown, making it more attractive to tech entrepreneurs.

Think again about these cities’ skylines. Milwaukee’s tallest skyscraper is the US Bank building, home to the bank, Baird and other services providers — which proliferate when there are a lot of operating companies to feed them.

Indy’s tallest skyscraper is Salesforce Tower; Salesforce employs about 2,100 in Indiana. And guess what? San Francisco-based Salesforce didn’t come searching for a location or responding to an economic development agency’s financial incentives package. Salesforce came to Indy to buy ExactTarget, a then-13-year-old email marketing software company.

Salesforce’s $2.5 billion ExactTarget acquisition in 2013 unleashed the magic every region is looking for: A bevy of potential startup founders and investors.

Dorsey's fingerprints all over Indiana's success

But there’s a more subtle part of the magic: Scott Dorsey.

Dorsey, an ExactTarget co-founder, started High Alpha venture studio in 2015 to build and invest in business-to-business (B2B), software as a service (SaaS) companies. It has launched more than 30 companies, invested in more than 60 founders, and helped Indianapolis develop excellence around B2B, SaaS companies.

The result: Founders like Lindsay Tjepkema, who wouldn’t have started Casted if Dorsey hadn't heard her on a podcast and inspired her to launch her B2B content marketing platform startup.

“He pushed the button,” Tjepkema told me on the Midwest Moxie podcast.

Dorsey has pushed a lot of buttons. His fingerprints are all over Indiana’s emergence as a tech-focused, risk-taking ecosystem. I have to believe he was involved in getting Indiana’s 2018 law exempting SaaS companies from sales tax. Dorsey started Nextech, a nonprofit focused on dedicated to ensuring Indiana’s future workforce has education and training in computer science. He was involved in bringing TechStars to Indy to run a sports tech accelerator.

And he’s served on the executive committee of Techpoint, which produces the Indiana Tech Venture Report. It uses data from Pitchbook — the accepted standard — to paint an honest picture of Indiana’s tech economy, identifying which startups attracted investments or exited, and which venture funds raised capital during the previous year.

The closest publication I can find in Wisconsin is the Wisconsin Technology Council’s Wisconsin Portfolio Report, which collects its own venture capital data rather than using Pitchbook. (Why not re-invent the wheel?) Littered with advertisements and a long list of sometimes decades-old legislative "accomplishments," the report doesn’t paint a similarly crisp, frank picture. I bet Dorsey would have some recommendations.

Entrepreneurs with innovative ideas attract other smart people, who have other innovative ideas. Success breeds success and eventually the status quo is upset, change becomes more common, and economic progress accelerates.

That’s why Elevate Ventures, the venture development partner for the state of Indiana, could attract as its new CEO someone like Christopher Day, who has co-founded eight businesses.

Again and again I see Indiana acting smart and partnering with gold standard partners. The Indy Chamber has been working with Brookings Institution and Indiana University to assess progress on achieving inclusive economic growth. It also in 2015 got Greenstreet Ltd. to conduct the “Indianapolis Anchor Institution Baseline and Benchmarking Study.”

And the Chamber’s ‘Life in Indy’ website is top-notch. Makes you want to contact one of the site’s Indyfluencers to learn more.

Sadly, Mayor Johnson’s million Milwaukeeans idea has generated lots of discussion and even a conference about accommodating potential population growth by modifying zoning codes, transportation, streets and other infrastructure. But there’s no evidence of a real plan for the necessary economic growth.

Indy has its own happy combination of collaborative leaders willing to go all-in on a business focus and tech company founders like Dorsey actively engaging in what the future will look like.

Before it can grow its population, Milwaukee needs to find its own collaborative leaders and tech company founders — I know they’re out there — identify a focus and go all in on it.

Kathleen Gallagher was a business reporter at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Milwaukee Sentinel for 23 years. She was one of two reporters on the team that won a 2011 Pulitzer Prize for the One in a Billion series. Gallagher is now executive director of 5 Lakes Institute, a nonprofit working to grow the Great Lakes region's high technology entrepreneurial economy and culture. She can be reached at Kathleen@5lakesinstitute.org.

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Kathleen Gallagher: Why Milwaukee has failed to grow like Indianapolis