A Tuna Salad Company, A Seafood Company or a Canned Goods Company?

That’s the old Branding 101 example of “you are what you say you are.” The idea being that Starkist or Bumblebee will be most successful expanding their product offerings if it fits in with a defined brand that people understand. You might be open to buying Starkist brand canned salmon or even Bumblebee fresh tuna steaks. Conversely, you probably wouldn’t want to buy tuna fish from a motor oil company, just because they branded themselves as a business that “makes things in containers.” So there are limits to everything.

We see a lot of that going on in our region. Boeing isn’t an “airplane company,” but rather an aerospace company and so you’re open to buying their tankers, and satellites and missiles. Microsoft is very much in the middle of defining themselves as a “platform company” that provides the tools upon which you create – whether that be word documents, video games, mobile apps or building energy management software.

These are the things that I thought of when I saw this article about BMW investing in IT start-ups as a way to facilitate defining themselves as a “mobility company.” Is this more Chicken of the Sea canned salmon or Pennzoil tuna?*

We’re All International Now

I have one add to Eric’s excellent post on the Greater Seattle Chamber’s Intercity Study Mission to the Silicon Valley.  The trip is the the Chamber’s domestic study mission, as compared to the international trip that the Trade Development Alliance organizes for the Chamber…which this year travels to the UK.

But the Chamber’s Intercity trip to Silicon Valley was anything but domestic in nature. In our technology neighbor to the south we found an engineering work force that was 50 percent foreign born led by CEOs a majority of whom were also born overseas. We saw electric car company business models that are targeted at international markets, a social media platform that connects hundreds of millions of people across the world and schools that are preparing students for a life lived in an ever connected globe.

The Silicon Valley would not be the Silicon Valley without large international customers, without foreign talent and without important partnerships abroad.  The same, of course, is true for Greater Seattle’s technology sectors. In today’s globalized world, even a domestic study mission is an international study mission

Weekly B-MOW: Seattle Chamber Intercity Study Mission

Every year, the Seattle Chamber does an “intercity study mission,” bringing regional business, government and community leaders to a peer city for a three day exploration of similarities, differences and, most importantly, the best practices that we can take back and copy in our own region. This past week, a group of us traveled for this year’s trip to San Jose for an Intercity Study Mission to Silicon Valley.

The reason to do a study mission to Silicon Valley is obvious: as much as we fancy ourselves as a leading region for innovation, we pale in comparison to the sheer breadth and depth and magnitude of what has come out of that region – HP, Google, Adobe, Apple, Yahoo…the list goes on and on. So, what are those things that we can take from them?

Here are my top three takeaways:

Two Words That Go Great Together: “Innovation” and “Summit”

The Prosperity Blog doesn’t usually shill for events. We like to keep our integrity so that you see us as an unbiased observer of the regional economic development scene. (Except for all that shilling we do for our own initiatives and priorities, but hey, man’s gotta eat.)

So, given that general practice of restraint, you will hopefully take it with some seriousness when we step out of that restriction and tell you that you probably don’t want to miss the 2011 Washington Innovation Summit on March 18. Seriously.

There’s two reasons we’re encouraging you to attend. First, the presenters – leading technology, business and policy experts like Crossing the Chasm author Geoffrey Moore and Larry Smarr, Founding Director of the California Institute for Telecommunications & Information Technology – plus a who’s who of panelists from the region and state: Steve Davis, Bruce Kendall, Ed Lazowska, Rick LeFaivre, Rogers Weed, Kim Zentz and a ton more (including our own Bob Drewel). By the way, note that I didn’t tell you who that last list of people are…if you don’t know, then you definitely need to attend!

The second reason you should probably go, is that it’s all about the issues we care most about here at the Prosperity Blog:

• How the state is fusing support for innovation into its overall economic development strategy;
• How emerging information technologies are dramatically changing our economy, presenting our state with new challenges as well as exciting new opportunities;
• How the very nature of the enterprise is evolving, and how we should respond; and
• How our industries can grow exports and strengthen global relationships.

As we’ve said before, innovation is like coolness, so be there or be square. And, as an added incentive, if you find me at the event and mention this blog post, you’ll get a sincere handshake from me…and if you’re lucky, I might even touch your shoulder with my left hand while shaking with my right. That’s how real economic developers do it.

Getting Around “Lending of Credit”

Every economic development blog in the state of Washington has, at some point, railed against the “lending of credit” provision in the state’s constitution. Which is actually a pretty good pun, considering the lending of credit provision was put in as a backlash against “greedy” railroad barons. Zinger! Anyway, you know what I’m talking about: the prohibition against direct investment of public funds into private enterprises. Which is a big deal around the country in economic development, where cities and states will throw money at a company to get it to move there. Sometimes that works out, sometimes it’s money that they don’t quite have.

A lot of folks in the state talk about making a run at a constitutional amendment, but I’ve never seen anyone actually make a go of it. Not that there’s a lot of money in the state government to lend to private companies anyway. But there are actually some interesting approaches that get around that prohibition going on these days.

Hey Kid, Go Be Entrepreneurial

One of the things that we hear a lot about in the economic development community is the importance of small business and entrepreneurship. A majority of jobs get created by small business, to say nothing about how many new products and innovations get launched that way as well. Here in Washington state, we’re great at entrepreneurship, with one of the highest rates of business starts per capita…except that we also have one of the highest rates of business failures per capita.

We’ve done a lot of research on that topic, and there are several reasons why those stats are somewhat misleading (for example, the high percentage of seasonal businesses…like farming…that get created and then close on purpose each year). And there’s issues with the B&O as a tax on businesses in the “valley of death” (pre-profitable, yet forced to pay a gross revenues tax). But it’s also true that successfully starting and running a business is hard, and there’s not actually a lot of resources out there to prepare you for it.

Fuuuuuukuoka, Where the Wind Comes Sweepin’ Down the Plains

Now that I’m slowly adjusting back to this time zone, I thought I’d update everyone on last week’s meeting of the International Regions Benchmarking Consortium in Fukuoka, Japan. The IRBC, as its known, is our group of 10 regions from around the world that gather annually to look at specific issues in economic development and share best practices. This year, Fukuoka took their turn to host, and the topic was Research Universities and the Knowledge Region. What do those two have to do with each other? Glad you asked!

The Two Body Problem

I was at today’s City Club lunch listening to a panel on “Revolutionary Innovation.” One of the speakers was Dr. Yoky Matsuoka, an Associate Professor at the University of Washington who is literally pioneering the field of neurobotics (which is the combination of the two disciplines you think it is). She’s a true star in the scientific community, a MacArthur “Genius” Fellow and someone who moved here after a career at MIT and Harvard. So the moderator asked her what it was about Seattle that attracted her to come out here. Her answer? The region helped her solve the “two body problem.”

Philanthropy in Economic Development

You may have seen the article in today’s Seattle Times about how the Iacocca Family Foundation (yes, that Iacocca) is investing in a local biotech company. The human interest hook is that Lee Iacocca’s first wife, Mary, died from diabetes, and so the former Chrysler chairman is investing in potential therapies that can cure the disease. But the economic development hook is much more intriguing.

I Want To Be Close To You

In the online, globalized world, geography doesn’t matter anymore, because we can email/conference call/GoToMeeting/virtual/3D/sync/nonsenseword/etc. Except that it totally does. For example, this new Innovation Center going right next to PNNL in Richland, WA. Why do they need to be right next to the Pacific Northwest National Lab? Is the IP coming out of there too heavy to move very far? Or is it, as others are arguing, that geography is a really important aspect to technology commercialization:

The Korean Success Story

Sam Anderson of the Master Builders 'listens' to a phone call through resonance

The 2010 International Study Mission, produced by the Greater Seattle Chamber and the Trade Development Alliance, is to Daejeon and Seoul, South Korea this week. I think we sometimes forget what a success story Korea is, but the country’s accomplishments are impressive.

The Recovery Act as Baby Boom

Good public policy is all about planning ahead. It’s like that old Wayne Gretsky quote about being where the puck is going to be (and no, I’m not talking hockey because I’m on the post-Olympics NHL bandwagon…although, go Flyers!). One of the biggest public policy challenges that our country is facing is what do we do about all these baby boomers, who are going to increasingly put a strain on things like Social Security & Medicare, on our healthcare system and on our workforce needs. (Nothing personal, boomers.)

On the economic development side of things, I think that there is going to be a similar challenge/opportunity with Recovery Act investments in R&D.

Get Your Game On

It’s winter, it’s raining, it’s dark. Playing outside is still a feasible option, but if you prefer to stay warm and dry, then why not choose entertainment that supports one of the region’s fastest growing niche industries: electronic games. If you want to sound more professional, say you’re supporting the “interactive media” industry, which is the same, but refers more inclusively to aerospace and medical applications also being developed in this region, referred to as “serious games” (not that your own Xbox efforts aren’t serious).

Manufacturing in the Central Puget Sound

Last week, the Obama Administration announced another big expenditure from the Recovery Act – $2.3 billion in clean technology manufacturing tax credits to not only create jobs but actually spur investment in mass producing clean tech products. How much of that manufacturing will be done here? $0.00.

In fact, the only Washington company that got any money was our good friends at Ramgen, but it was to produce their exciting new carbon capture technology in upstate New York. When you see that, it recalls the conventional wisdom you always hear about our business climate being bad for manufacturing. But is that true?

Big Ideas of 2009

It’s getting to be that time of year when people start doing annual recaps; this year, folks get to have even more fun with decade recaps as well. My very favorite of these – the New York Times Magazines’ Year in Ideas issues – is going to come out soon, and I can hardly contain my glee. We here at the Prosperity Blog have also had a good year of ideas, generating all sorts of practical proposals for improving our region’s business climate and competitiveness. But, of course, we have also had lots of impractical, sky’s-the-limit ideas that we hope someone is going to take and run with and make all our dreams come true. So, for all you good-idea-awaiting folks out there, here’s a summary of some of our “Big Ideas of 2009″, presented in Top Ten format: