May 23, 2012
BMW Manufacturing Company, South Carolina’s greatest economic success over the past two decades, continues to add chapters to its story with no end in sight. Since production began at the plant near Spartanburg in September 1994, it has been expanded four times, has produced more than 2 million vehicles and has provided more than US$5.8 billion in compensation to its employees.
May 23, 2012
How is the United States going to rein in health care costs, while still maintaining its competitive advantage in life science innovation? How are we going to provide adequate healthcare for seven billion — soon to be nine billion — people around the world?
May 23, 2012
BIO International Convention organizers are hoping for the usual surge in attendance provided by the Boston biotech community at the event scheduled for June 18-21 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center. While it may not reach the 22,000 level achieved at the last Boston BIO in 2007, it should surpass the 15,600 who came to last year’s event in Washington, D.C. Exhibitors will occupy more than 215,000 sq. ft of exhibit space.
May 23, 2012
State biotech associations are putting finishing touches on their exhibits and event planning for this year’s BIO International Convention set for the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center June 18-21. Twenty-three states, plus Puerto Rico, will have pavilions. They will be joined by 33 international pavilions promoting the industry in their respective countries and regions.
May 22, 2012
Volkswagen’s global head of factory planning explains how the company’s Tennessee site facilitated LEED-Platinum certification. In late March Volkswagen announced it would add 800 more jobs to the payroll at its new plant in Chattanooga, Tenn.
May 14, 2012
Ohio’s vibrant metro areas are producing more than their share of downtown remakes and re-visions. Funded by a range of public-private entities, TIF arrangements and incentives, these projects’ campus-style atmospheres often have direct ties to university campuses.
May 14, 2012
‘We speak business out here.’ In Fulton County, a community of 43,280 people west of Toledo, manufacturing companies are experiencing robust growth thanks to a home-grown but globally competitive work force.
May 10, 2012
States trying to get a big corporate facility project across the goal line sometimes have to call special legislative sessions to approve incentive packages or other special statutory measures designed to cinch the deal. But in the interest of speed, recent years have seen an increase in discretionary incentive funds established for just this purpose.
May 9, 2012
Malaysia’s capital of Kuala Lumpur has a key role to play in the successful implementation of the 10th Malaysia Plan, the government’s blueprint for making the country an effective competitor for global capital investment in high-income industry sectors. The Plan identifies 12 National Key Economic Areas (NKEAs) with the potential to produce high incomes and generate sustainable competitiveness on a global scale.
May 9, 2012
The Malaysian Investment Development Authority (MIDA) is leading new efforts to facilitate foreign direct investment into key industry sectors in order to meet objectives set forth in the Economic Transformation Programme by 2020. The plan stresses increased investment in several sectors that will help transform Malaysia into a higher-income economy complete with the infrastructure and labor supply necessary to sustain the target sectors into the future.
May 9, 2012
From automotive manufacturing to the chemicals and life-sciences sectors, few factors are more important to global competitiveness than speed to market. In fact, for some industrial companies, the presence of a superior transportation and logistics network is the most critical component of all. In Saxony-Anhalt, Germany, logistics is at the heart of the state’s business growth strategy — and a world-class transportation network is the driver.
May 8, 2012
Today Ak-Chin Indian Community and business leaders are reclaiming land. But their eyes are on the bright path to the future, as they seek to foster enterprise instead of entitlement.
May 8, 2012
Angola has still to catch up with being oil rich and at peace with itself. A decade has passed since its long civil war ended, and in many ways it has made remarkable progress. Yet much remains to be done – from building infrastructure to reviving agriculture and raising much of its population out of poverty.
May 8, 2012
An expanded list of Best to Invest European cities adds representative metros of Austria, Italy and Spain on the Western side and Estonia, Turkey and the Slovak Republic in the East (see charts). These metros captured enough new and expanded facility investments in 2011, and were deemed superior to other metros in their regions in the LocationSelector.com analysis from IC Associates outlined on page 28, to be recognized here for consideration when European locations are in play.
May 8, 2012
China and India metros dominate this year’s Best to Invest ranking of Asia-Pacific cities — determined by Site Selection’s New Plant Database, LocationSelector.com analysis from Amsterdam-based IC Associates and a survey of global site consultants. But there’s plenty of activity elsewhere in the region, particularly in Sydney, Australia, and Seoul and Ulsan, South Korea, which ranked sixth, seventh and eighth, respectively.
May 4, 2012
In laboratories around the world, researchers are racing to find cures that will drive business. Driven by the implications of patent loss, rising research and development costs and declining return on investment, downward pricing pressure and other factors, the lief sciences industry is regrouping to increase productivity and business performance.
May 3, 2012
Every picture tells a story. Every year corporations and communities come together to paint pictures of project success. And every spring Site Selection salutes the best corporate facility projects in the world, judged by investment, high-value and high-volume job creation, creativity in negotiations and incentives, regional economic impact, competition and speed to market.
May 2, 2012
Top-performing economic development groups apply lessons learned during the downturn. When the global financial markets reached meltdown status in the fall of 2008, very few envisioned a time when a handful of U.S. cities would reach unprecedented heights of economic prosperity.
May 2, 2012
By claiming first place in Site Selection’s annual ranking of state competitiveness, Virginia proved that second place merely means there’s room for improvement. The Commonwealth lost no ground and gained what little there was to gain from its runner-up finish in 2010 with a best-in-class finish for economic development success in 2011.
May 2, 2012
Site Selection Online, March 2012 edition of Site Selection – the magazine of corporate real estate strategy and area economic development. Cover story: Ohio Victorious in 2011 Facilities Race
April 30, 2012
Rumbling bulldozers had barely scraped the sandy loam at the groundbreaking of Nephron Pharmaceuticals’ new South Carolina plant when CEO Lou Kennedy began talking about doing more.
April 30, 2012
In the May 2012 issue of Harvard Business Review, Anne Marie Knott, a former Hughes Aircraft engineer who serves as professor of strategy at Washington University’s Olin Business School in St. Louis, has published “The Trillion-Dollar R&D Fix.”
April 30, 2012
It was a time for bell ringing in Newton County, Ga. The promise of 1,500 new jobs meant that, in keeping with a tradition, a ceremonial bell would be rung 1,500 times. Baxter International is coming to town with its $1 billion-plus investment for a biologics manufacturing facility, and local officials and residents wanted to celebrate.
April 26, 2012
Measured by its ability to weather acute and chronic stresses, Rochester, N.Y. was ranked 61st out of 361 U.S. metros last year by the Resilience Capacity Index (RCI), developed by Kathryn A. Foster, director of the Regional Institute, a research and public policy center of the University at Buffalo.