Washington #6 in Nation for Best Business Tax Climate

The Tax Foundation, a non-partisan research group based in Washington, D.C. just released the 2013 edition of the State Business Tax Climate Index. Washington ranked #6 in this measurement, which is an overall ranking that considers corporate, individual income, sales, property and unemployment insurance tax rates for each state. Read details here.

Seattle OED February City Business Casual

This month’s City Business Casual is this Thursday, February 9, from 5:00 to 7:00 p.m at O’Asian Kitchen, located at:

800 5th Avenue, Suite Plaza 1 (located on the P level)
Seattle, WA  98104

Special guests for this month’s theme, Major Institutions (educational and healthcare), include:
Tim Burgess, Councilmember, City of Seattle
Dan Dixon, Vice President, External Relations, Swedish
Theresa Doherty, Director, Regional and Community Relations, UW
Beth Hester, Communications Director, Office of the Mayor, City of Seattle
Paul Killpatrick, President, Seattle Central Community College
Bernie Matsuno, Director, Dept. of Neighborhoods, City of Seattle
Edna Shim, Director, Regional Gov’t Affairs & Community Relations, Children’s
Diane Sugimura, Director, Dept. of Planning & Development, City of Seattle
Jill Wakefield, Chancellor, Seattle Community Colleges

Seattle Chamber’s Job Sector Survey

Do you operate a business in King, Pierce, Snohomish or Kitsap county? If so, you should participate in the Seattle Chamber of Commerce’s second annual Job Sector Survey.

“The more businesses that return the survey, the better we can understand how to grow jobs in our region and get people back to work,” said King County Executive Dow Constantine in a press release announcing the survey launch. “An accurate picture of what it takes to attract new businesses and support the businesses that are here will help us in government foster the climate for a prosperous and sustainable economy.”

You have until August 13th to complete the survey and participants will be included in a drawing to win two Southwest Airlines Green LUV tickets.

Click here to complete the survey

New Reasons for Onshoring

Deep in the hearts of local economic development people everywhere is the hope that maybe, just maybe, jobs that have been outsourced to other countries will come back. It’s called “onshoring,” the idea that local companies who opened factories in other parts of the world will say, “this isn’t working…I’m going back to the old way of doing things.” Or rather, “I’m going back to the old place where I used to do things: the U.S.!”

But one of the newest reasons for this trend has nothing to do with our labor costs or quality issues. Rather, it’s the fact that workers here don’t get shot at.

“The Goal of Business isn’t to Create Jobs.”

Yesterday was the kick-off meeting of the Regional Economic Strategy Technical Advisory Group…or, as I like to call them, the RESTAG (you already know from things like B-MOW and REDEW that I’m terrible at acronyms). For those of you who have been reading about our preparations to start developing a new Regional Economic Strategy, you’ll be happy to hear that we’ve moved from talking about doing it to actually starting!

And start, we did. With about 50 people packing the PSRC Boardroom, we introduced our consultants – TIP Strategies of Austin, TX – and got people thinking about the major issues that are going to frame our thinking about the strategy: things like the increasing divergence in economic opportunity between people with and without college education, the impacts of our aging workforce and trends (both positive and negative) with regard to manufacturing.

But what stood out the most from the TIP Strategies presentation wasn’t any of those, but rather a point so simple yet fundamental that it was almost revolutionary to hear. And, with full attribution to them, I wanted to share it with all of you: “the goal of business isn’t to create jobs.”

Economic Development Through Tax Incentives

Often, us in the Washington state economic development world mention the challenges that we have in not being able to engage in traditional economic development incentives. Because of our state constitution, we can’t do a lot of the direct financial offerings to companies that other states do, as it violates our “lending of credit” provision.

But this article in the trusty New York Times points out that using incentives to lure companies across state borders can be a tough way to do economic development“:

Prosperity Blog on Citytank

Many of you in the blogosphere know Dan Bertolet, formerly of hugeasscity then Publicola: urban thinker and writer extraordinaire. You may or may not know that Dan has started a new blog, Citytank, which “believes that cities are the solution. Our mission is to propagate ideas that help fulfill the promise of cities to both expand the human spirit, and sustain a thriving planet.”

In particular, he’s started this “C200 Series” that attempts to explain “why cities matter. In 200 words. By a bunch of wicked smarty pants authors.” And your Prosperity Blog is nothing if not smarty pants.

So here’s our contribution. Which is a distillation of an older post we did on that same topic back around the time of the NYT Magazine Year in Ideas. And you know how we feel about the Year in Ideas.

Anyway, enjoy our Citytank post!

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:

Clusters Don’t Work

According to Europe’s Centre for Economic Policy Research, at least. According to them, an “analysis of 1,604 companies in the five largest Norwegian cities found that regional and national clusters are “irrelevant for innovation.” On the contrary, international cooperation or “global pipelines” were identified as the main drivers of innovation.”

Oh no! Well, this officially marks the end of the Prosperity Partnership and the Regional Economic Strategy.

Money for Metropolitan Business Planning

One thing that we’ve lost focus on during the two years of the Metropolitan Business Plan process is that it’s not just about BETI. Yes, yes, we love our idea for the Building Energy-Efficiency Testing & Integration Center and Demonstration Network, and its proposal to catalyze our local energy efficiency IT cluster through validating these technologies in real-world settings. But although we identified the idea of BETI through the Metropolitan Business Planning process, the MBP goals are much broader.

And the exciting thing is that one of the big goals – funding of regions through Metropolitan Business Plans – may be coming to fruition!

Weekly B-MOW: Washington Innovation Summit

I go to a lot of events. Many of them are boring. But I put my neck out a few weeks ago and said that the Washington Innovation Summit would not be. And I was right. I mean, really interesting panels, very forward thinking topics and some great keynotes. If you haven’t heard Geoffrey Moore speak on the transition in enterprise IT from “systems of record” to “systems of engagement,” then you don’t know what the next major business opportunity in the global economy will be.

Apparently, the whole day was video recorded, and will be available on the Technology Alliance website. And you can follow the audience’s questions and comments on Twitter via the hashtag #WAInnovation (including several insightful tweets from yours truly and a back and forth on how funny Bill McSherry is).

But if you want an immediate taste, I took a video of the opening panel, featuring some of the state’s economic development luminaries talking about how we continue to invest in economic development in a time of scarce public money.

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.

It’s a(n Economic Development) War Out There

One of the slightly humorous/very telling things that happened at the Brookings Chicago Summit was a interesting linguistic choice by the folks from Munich. As I’ve mentioned, on the first day of that event, each of the three Metropolitan Business Plan regions presented on their plans paired with presentations from international regions: Ohio with the industrial economy of Cleveland, Twin Cities with the high talent/quality of life economy of Barcelona…and Puget Sound paired with the high tech economy of Munich.

It was actually a decent pairing, especially because of their focus on aerospace and clean tech. And yet, there was an important difference.  When Munich was discussing their comprehensive economic development initiative, they didn’t use “strategy” or “plan” like we do. Instead, they referred to it as the Offensive Zukunft Bayern: the “Offensive for the Future of Bavaria”!

Should the State of Washington Privatize Economic Development?

In the state of Washington, we have a state department known as the Department of Commerce. It is a government department, like many others, such as Ecology or Revenue, and it does various government functions, like invest in infrastructure and implement policy. But unlike many other state departments, it has a lot of responsibility to work directly with businesses in supportive ways, recruiting and retaining companies and fostering job creation. And so, like in other states, it’s an interesting question to ask: should it be privatized?

Density = Economic Development?

Every good cause has lots of reasons to support it. And often, those causes change their arguments based on the times. For example, in the last three years of economic downturn, you’ve heard a lot more about how this service or that organization is a “major job creator” or has a “huge economic impact.” In my personal life, I’ve seen that a lot with regard to the arts, but it’s rampant in all fields these days. But even with all of that focus, the work of the physicist Geoffrey West stands out; it could be that he’s created the ultimate economic development argument for urban density and “smart growth.”