Features

They called it “the Building of the Month Club” at Cisco Systems ( http://www.cisco.com) , and it was exactly that. For 19 consecutive months in 1998-99, Cisco brought yet another new building online in North San Jose. By the time that flurry finished — however momentarily — Cisco had built 35 separate facilities spanning 6.3 […]

From Tallahassee to Sacramento, lawmakers in state capitals around the United States heeded business leaders? call to ?run government more like a business.? The result: lower taxes, higher revenue surpluses, more incentives for new business, a rush of ?e-government? and information technology initiatives, and greater investment in needed infrastructure projects like roads, bridges, public schools […]

It?s official, already: The glow is back on the Golden State?s business climate. That?s the scoop from the top of Site Selection?s business climate rankings for 2000. California this year moved all the way up to No. 1 from 1999?s No. 5 finish. The Golden State ranks as a perennial business location powerhouse, of course, […]

World business climates in late 2000 are, for the most part, fair. But some forces are at work that could change that in the New Year. Energy prices in Western markets, particularly the United Kingdom and Continental Europe, are exerting pressure on businesses that manufacture and transport goods. A scarcity of skilled labor is a […]

A good man is hard to find, especially in a market where unemployment rates have dropped nearly a full percentage point from last year and continue to drop by approximately one-tenth a month. For this reason, many site seekers are looking away from Europe’s usual suspects for more abundant labor pools. Although the European labor […]

When Chicago-based Navistar International Corp. needed to expand its new truck assembly operations in 1998, the company selected Monterrey suburb Escobedo in Nuevo Leon, Mexico, for the same reasons that have catapulted the Mexican economy to the forefront of Latin America. Factors like a strong work ethic, an abundant supply of highly skilled manufacturing employees, […]

We live in an age of e-commerce, fiber optics, information systems and infrastructure, and ideas and initiatives moving at the speed of light through a network of silicon and wiring. And that prompts one to ask, why do so many good ideas go bad? Could it be that we have forgotten in this gizmo-oriented age […]

A group of leading government and industry leaders known as the Industrial Rebirth Council was formed in July 2000 to expand and support Japanese economic reform initiatives. The council, which was convened by — and is chaired by — Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, is comprised of key government ministers and CEOs of such companies as […]

The Renaissance of the South is, by now, an old story. From Atlanta to Charlotte to Raleigh-Durham, the metropolitan areas of the Southeastern U.S. experienced unprecedented economic growth during the 1980s and 1990s. What may not be so well known is the economic resurgence of the Old South’s southernmost state: Florida. From Tallahassee to Jacksonville […]

Abstracts of recent major presentations of the International Development Research Council (IDRC), the world’s preeminent corporate real estate association. “Using Web-Based Technologies to Manage the Corporate Infrastructure,” New York World Congress, May 2, 2000: Peregrine Systems’ Nancy Johnson Sanquist told this jam-packed workshop session, “Infrastructure management is the mortar that connects the clicks with the […]