’Strictly Business’: Mike Polito touts openness to innovation as key to success
If you want to challenge the status quo, you have to believe that the status quo is not acceptable.
That’s according to MAPP CEO Mike Polito, who sat down for Business Report’s Strictly Business webcast to share insights from his career in the construction industry.
While he originally wanted to become a sports information director, he realized early on that there was only one sports information director position that he would want. Polito ultimately pursued a degree in construction from LSU to follow in the footsteps of several cousins who had graduated from the program.
He got his start in the construction industry by going to work with Lane Grigsby, who founded Cajun Industries.
“He and I met and over the course of a night at the Patio Lounge, we decided that we would go into business,” Polito says. “He thought it was the perfect thing for me to do. … It was an obvious opportunity that you couldn’t pass up, for somebody like that to support you.”
While Polito says they could have been profitable staying in the Baton Rouge market for work, he wanted to grow into a more regional effort. Opening an office in Dallas was an early milestone for the company that helped fuel the growth of the organization, he says.
Overall, construction is the least innovative and the least disrupted industry in the country, says Polito, adding that MAPP’s openness to innovation over the years has helped separate the company, especially in south Louisiana.
“When you’re competing in Dallas and you’re competing in Atlanta, those markets are highly innovative,” he says. “You learn from them and then you try to keep up with the Joneses in those markets, and then tend to be a little bit ahead of the curve in south Louisiana.
[Innovation] doesn’t come from me saying, ‘Let’s be innovative.’ It comes from a project manager in our IT department getting together and coming up with a new way to do something.”