BusinessWeek recently ran a piece titled "The High Cost of Wooing Google"about Lenoir N.C., a small manufacturing town that offered $211.7 million inincentives to lure a Google data center with 210 jobs.One of the "aha" moments we had while reading the article was the statement that it was the local power utility, Duke Energy Co., who hosted the introductory meeting between the city's representatives and Google's site selection consultants. Why the power utility? They wanted to sell the power to the Google data center. Sounds like a good motivator.
Much like the comments to this blog, some of the more interesting things come up in the responses, in this case, letters to the magazine after the article ran. Some took issue with the BusinessWeek report, saying that the article made it look like the city gave in to every Google demand. But we found this excerpt from one letter very telling:
..."Communities seeking jobs should instead invest in more skillful marketing of what they offer business and in building value to make their product more marketable. In business, price cutting is a desperate last resort after marketing has failed. In government economic development agencies, it is the dominant strategy. Why didn't Lenoir proactively go after multiple companies instead of waiting to be found by Google and giving them the overwhelming advantage in negotiating a deal?"
1 comment:
Is KUA going to bend over backwards to increase the amount of power sold? It seems that KUA has been more focused on starting its own little businesses and competing with local private businesses instead of increasing its base of consumers for power. From discussions it seems that it is content with allowing the housing boom (not anymore) to build it subscriber base.
Let's just hope that before hurricane season hits KUA will invest some time into checking the wooden polls for termite damage. We know they are great at getting us up and running after a storm, but can they do the job before the storm?
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