WASHINGTON SPOTLIGHT -- Site Selection magazine, September 2006

Local Technology Industry Is Here to Stay

hat the Vancouver, Wash., area lacks in higher education resources it makes up for in quality of life and a decades- old high- tech knowledge base that still is the engine of the local economy. As for education, a branch of Washington State University is now in place. As for quality of life, local executives have little trouble recruiting people into the area to fill jobs.
   "We find it's really easy to get people to move to this location," says Douglas Anderson, operations manager, industrial and commercial products, at Underwriters Laboratories, Inc., in Camus, just east of Vancouver. "If we need some experienced people with certain skills to move from New York or Chicago or Silicon Valley, it's easy to do that. Moving to Silicon Valley or Chicago is a whole different story."
   But even more important to the area is its high- tech foundation, which is something of an anomaly for IT clusters.
   "This is the only technology center in the United States that did not grow up in close collaboration with a major research institution," says Bart Phillips, president of the Columbia River Economic Development Council. "That is very unique. The knowledge came from companies like Techtronics and Intel and others. They serve as the cauldron, if you will, for innovation and training and talent. We're still relying on that today."

Keep R&D in Camus

   The area's employment base is strong on the high- tech side, even though it has had to transition to keep pace with global manufacturing dynamics. The area's high- tech industry learned years ago that to stay relevant and profitable, it is necessary to specialize in niche markets and let the commodity manufacturing go elsewhere – as it did, mainly to China.
   "Our employee base has changed greatly in the past 10 years to where it's mainly electrical engineers and Ph.D.s," says Casey O'Dell, facilities manager at Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas, which shares space with Sharp Labs at a campus in Camus, where liquid crystal display technology was produced until several years ago. The facility today runs global sales and marketing and R&D for various product lines, but many of the Sharp workers found suitable employment at a nearby Hewlett- Packard plant.
   But not all commodity work in the area's high- tech community left town. Linear Technology Corp. is still manufacturing analog chips in Camus that other companies stopped making years ago. Why? Because it's now a niche technology market, and there is still a demand for its products. Another reason for staying in the southern Washington location is the development community's willingness to work with business, particularly where regulatory matters are concerned.
   "Historically, we have been able to work with the city and come to reasonable terms on different [permitting and regulatory] matters, even though at times federal departments might take an extreme view," says Victor Liang, Linear Technology's plant manager. "If it were not for the local people helping with interpretation of these things, it would be difficult to proceed."