Features

Traditional businesses can rest easier: NASDAQ’s recent violent nature is a symptom of the impending collapse of dozens of former online darlings. As it turns, out solid business plans, management-team depth, effective business models (however boring), customer service, competitive advantages, and (duh) profits really do matter. The dot-com’s e-retail strategy — spending millions of dollars […]

Newfoundland & Labrador’s call center industry, though small in comparison to larger provinces, is growing. In fact, it’s grown by 20 percent since January 1999. The Atlantic province’s cost-competitive operating environment is one of the major lures attracting that growth, but another is equally important: labor. Newfoundland & Labrador’s per-capita labor pool, for instance, is […]

A business cost survey is the centerpiece of a Web-based service that lets “eCities” get the word out concerning local business development opportunities. Corporate site seekers now have yet another way to access key cost-of-doing-business data in markets around the USA via the Internet. The Kosmont Cost of Doing Business Survey tm, published by Kosmont […]

Economic development groups are among those likely to participate in the Keystone State’s newly designed Web site, PA PowerPort, an Internet portal for business development. Pennsylvania is broadening its efforts to be recognized as a technologically savvy place in which to grow a business. The Keystone State’s various public-private technology partnerships and healthy business climate […]

Abstracts of major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association. “Workplace Transformation: Redefining the Workplace,” IDRC Tennessee World Congress Opening General Session, Oct. 18, 1999: Bell South CEO Duane Ackerman kicked off the session with “Concrete, Cars and Cyberspace,” a case study in workplace redefinition. With many […]

If you build it, will they dot.com? Not necessarily. More accurately, if you dot.com it, you’d better build. 1999, you see, was the year in which some of the Internet’s leading lights decided that they needed big-time bricks to make their clicks work. That concrete lesson in real estate realities is part of the story […]

The Feb. 15-17 Leadership Development Forum in Scottsdale, Ariz., marked the beginning of an important new organizational initiative and membership benefit for the International Development Research Council (IDRC). Fifty-three leaders from the Executive Committee, Board of Directors, policy boards, committees and chapters took part in the program. “Leadership development is becoming integral to the strategic […]

America Online, Prince William County, Va.: The online king of clicks that swallowed Time-Warner searched nationwide before siting this $520 million, 200-employee technology center in this Northern Virginia county, which also bagged Covad Communications’ 1,000-employee technical center. Ameritrade, Fort Worth, Texas: Also part of the clicks-to-bricks brigade, Ameritrade will meet burgeoning online demand with this […]

Labor Pay vs. Consumer Income: Connecticut No. 1 in Both Cost-juggling: It’s often a major concern in locating operations, particularly the distribution facility juggle of calculating labor costs vs. the nearby market’s buying power. Connecticut, though, ranks No. 1 for both personal income per resident and average annual salary, according to the Statistical Abstract of […]

The customer is king in today’s hotly competitive environment, and expansion-minded corporate clients across the country received royal treatment from Site Selection‘s 1999 top development groups. Those organizations parlayed customer commitment into impressive bottom-line results, attracting an average of US$461 million in capital investments and 3,002 new jobs last year. Taking care of the customer […]