Who will win the Life Technologies location competition?

IPA chief executives dream about landing a company like Life Technologies (http://www.lifetechnologies.com) . This US corporation operates is the world of super-science, with customers, as its web site says, “across the biological spectrum, working to advance personalized medicine, regenerative science, molecular diagnostics, agricultural and environmental research, and 21st century forensics.” With annual sales approaching $4 billion, an intellectual property bank of some 3,900 patents and licenses, 11,000 worldwide employees and a presence in 160 countries, Life Technologies is a business of very bright people doing very bright things.

Now the company is to invest in a new advanced manufacturing facility. But it’s a three horse race, with existing plants in California and Scotland in the running as the location and a Greenfield development in China also under serious consideration. 

China’s attraction is not low wage costs but the country’s national drive to become a world leader in life sciences. China is educating and training scientists at a phenomenal rate. Walk around the campus of any good university in the world and you’ll find lots of young Chinese men and women in science and technology faculties.

China is building science parks, and encouraging international collaboration. It is also, of course, a medical and allied services market of vast potential in its own right, so it’s easy to see why Life Technologies is tempted by China.

Speaking to China Daily in June 2010, the president of the China Academy of Sciences said he considered international collaboration an inseparable part of the Academy’s R&D.

"International cooperation is both an effective means for us to bring in, absorb and utilize global scientific advancement, resources and talent for innovation, and a way for us to contribute to international science progress as well as to the tackling of various global challenges,"

One visiting scientist from the Netherlands commented, “The facilities are excellent and the openness is wonderful. The Chinese government is investing so generously in scientific research that it makes us in Europe jealous.”

For some 300 years the West developed and owned most of the world’s intellectual property. The UK, Germany and the US brought us much of the modern world.

For example, discoveries and innovations in medicine, chemistry and engineering made the University of Glasgow one of the 18th and 19th century global intellectual powerhouses. Located just a few miles from Life Technologies’ Scottish plant, it is still one of the world’s top universities. In the 20th century universities in California and the US dominated the world of discovery, invention and innovation. The 19th century was the British century, the 20th was the American century and the 21st shows all the signs of being the Chinese century. Some say China will have overtaken the US to become the world number one nation in science and technology by 2020. That’s just eight years away.

With China in the driving seat, it will need a super-human effort by governments in the UK and the US to keep their world class universities in the premier division. At present, there’s no sign that either government is acting to preserve the status quo. Wake up. It’s not only factories that are moving East. The world’s brain is on the move too.

I don’t know which location will win the Life Technologies investment, but I do know that beating China to the draw will need a tremendous effort by IPAs, politicians, local authorities, universities and communities if Scotland or California is to take the prize.

Ireland marches on in sport and on Twitter

It’s been a good week for Ireland. Down in New Zealand the country’s rugby football team finds itself on top of its group and comfortably on the way to the knock out stages of the Rugby World Cup. Ireland has been punching well above its weight on the international rugby field for nearly a decade now.* Even the shock of the country’s devastating economic collapse has failed to dent the skill, artistry and tenacity of its rugby athletes. Nor do those same qualities appear to have deserted the Irish Development Agency, which this week announced that Twitter is to open an international operations centre in Dublin (the announcement was made on Twitter, of course).

Twitter will join other new media giants that have fallen for Ireland’s charms. They include Google, which has some 2,000 staff in Ireland, Pay Pal, Facebook, Electronic Arts, Zynga and Linkedin.

Ireland’s corporation tax of 12.5% is certainly a big attraction.  It is of course English-speaking, has well educated people and, following its economic troubles, has a very competitive economy in wages, office space and high quality housing. All of this makes Ireland hard to resist for any business with international markets seeking a competitive cost base, good people and good connections. But Ireland has something else. It’s an asset that adds lustre and value to the hard and demanding businesses of FDI. The Irish know how to make life fun.

Many years ago, when I was running an inward investment office in London on behalf of five development agencies in Scotland, it was always a great thrill to get an invitation to the IDA’s St Patrick’s Day party at its office in upmarket Bond St. It was the best party in town and always packed with London’s elite from business, financial, media and diplomatic circles. Everyone was made warmly welcome, a glass was never allowed to stay empty and IDA staff worked tirelessly to help guests make new friends and contacts. Running a great party in a commercial environment is not easy. Hospitality can seem forced and the hosts are often nervous about potential cultural gaffes or upsetting somebody who might have an inflated view of their own importance. The Irish by-passed all such fears by running a business party in exactly the same way as they would a party in an Irish home. In Ireland, a home is a place that wants to make visitors and strangers feel completely at home and entirely welcome and comfortable. We’re not bad at this in my native Scotland and the Welsh are no slackers either, but the Irish are masterful.

If the IDA’s work starts with a big welcome and wonderful hospitality, it’s nursing of an FDI opportunity leaves little to be desired. Like all the very best IPAs (again the Scots and the Welsh stand out, as do the Maltese and the Finns) the IDA professionals nurture and champion every opportunity; guiding a company through the labyrinth, shifting barriers out of the way, easing paths, opening doors, staying in touch, responding at speed; at every step giving the investor more and more confidence that they’ll make the right choice in choosing Ireland. The growth figures for the UK and most of Europe make pretty grim reading at present, but Ireland is growing. It’s modest growth right now, but the IDA is showing how vital a blue chip IPA is to economic recovery and to building for the future.

*For those of you not familiar with Rugby Football, I should explain that the Irish international side is made up of players from the Republic of Ireland and from Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK. The IDA on the other hand represents only the Republic of Ireland.

Go Topeka – chocolate success and web site energy

I have never been to Topeka, Kansas. In fact, the only times in my life the city’s name has come to my attention is when I’ve occasionally heard the song “On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” which comes from a musical of 1946. The Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe in the song was a famous pioneering railroad company, though the name sadly disappeared in a merger in 1996. So, when a banner ad promoting Topeka popped up on an e-mail from the US publication, Site Selection International, I thought about how often I’d heard that song but knew nothing of the place, so I decided to click through to the website of GoTopeka, which describes itself as an “Economic Partnership.”

GoTopeka website

Now, I’ve looked at hundreds and hundreds of FDI, economic development and city promotion websites since the World Wide Web first became a serious marketing tool. I’ve written a few sites and advised on strategy, structure and content for many more. The best sites follow the rules of good newspaper design (the things I first learned in newsrooms 35 years ago still count) - a strong “lead story,” good headlines that tempt the reader to find out more and a variety of stories so there’s something for a range of interests. Most importantly, there’s always good use of white space to help make headlines and pictures stand out and arrest attention.

So, how did I rate Go Topeka’s web site? 8 out of ten, I’d say. It’s clean, sharp, bright, interesting and informative. It makes good and creative use of a recent success in attracting the Mars chocolate business to the city. Mars will spend an initial $250 million building a plant to make some of the world’s biggest confectionery brands. 200 people will be hired; a brilliant success for Topeka.

Congratulations are due for giving the e-mail addresses of senior staff. Data capturing e-mail forms have their uses, but nothing beats having contact with a real live human being that you can address by name. If you ask me to deal with a named person I feel more welcome. I feel I’m being treated with dignity and not simply as an anonymous stranger.

Could the site be improved? Well, here are a few thoughts:

• Rather than only a press release on the Mars success, I’d like to read detail on how Go Topeka attracted Mars in the first place and what it did to convince the business to locate in Topeka. That’s the sort of real practical information on benefits that executives with mobile projects want to know.
• Think about a music ident; a snatch of music that makes the site come a little more alive when first visited. Just a few bars of“On the Atchison, Topeka and the Santa Fe,” would do it.
• The web as we know it is changing fast and within a very short time sites with TV content will dominate the web. What an opportunity for us to watch the progress of the creation of a chocolate plant. Willie Wonka eat your heart out.

As we all know, there is not a lot of good economic news around the world at present, so it makes the heart beat a little faster to come across an organization like Go Topeka. It transmits those vital qualities of enthusiasm, infectious energy and professionalism. Enthusiasm, energy and professionalism are three of the essential elements needed to take the world back to confidence and growth.

New business empires bring FDI gifts to old imperial masters

Last week, The Economist – surely the single most influential publication in the business world – reported on the growing trend of big corporations from the emerging nations to invest inthe established Western economies, mainly by buying companies. Britain says the paper, is particularly attractive because there are few barriers to buying British companies and the country has many of the world’s best legal, accountancy and marketing brains, plus the City of London offers immensely valuable expertise and experience alongside its access to vast amounts of capital. British companies have gone under the hammer to corporations from Mexico, Thailand, Singapore and, most notably, India. Indeed India’s Tata is now the UK’s biggest manufacturing employer, with a pay roll of some 40,000 people.

The Economist cites Pankaj Ghemawat, the Harvard guru of globalisation (and author of the recent book, World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It*) who argues that many of the new southern hemisphere business giants will favour flexing their global muscles by putting FDI into countries that were once their European imperial masters. Britain, which had the world’s biggest empire, could do very nicely if the Tata experience is repeated and big businesses from former colonies buy into the UK, through either purchase or greenfield investment. So too could France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Spain and Portugal, all of which had substantial imperial possessions. My bet is on the UK doing best for the reasons given above, but also because its current coalition government is dominated by Conservative Party believers in free market economics, deregulation and conditions that promote maximum flexibility in the labour market. Having the freedom to further deregulate the labour market is one of the reasons why many on the British Right want to greatly reduce the UK’s ties with the EU, which has championed employee rights for decades. The EU is holding back Britain’s ability to compete is the argument of the anti-EU lobby, though they usually chose to side-step the fact that 40% of the UK’s trade is with EU nations. Loosening Britain’s ties with the EU at a time of massive economic instability seems rash and dangerous to many business leaders who employ millions of British workers and profit handsomely from trade with the EU.

During the 1990s the Conservative Party got close to destroying itself over the issue of EU involvement and the rifts that the argument created helped the party lose three general elections in a row between 1997 and 2010. In the years since then most of the senior Conservatives on the pro-EU wing have retired or died. Today it is a party overwhelmingly averse to the EU and it is only the presence of the pro-EU Liberal Democrats in the coalition that is preventing some senior Conservative ministers speaking out in support of the Euro sceptics. The issue of Europe has the potential to break up the coalition, though a more likely outcome is a compromise that sees Britain finding a way to reform its labour laws and regulations without loosening its bonds with the EU.

Further labour deregulation could open the floodgates to FDI from old imperial possessions, an irony that will not be lost on the British Left or the Trade Union movement, both of which for most of the 20^th century implacably opposed imperialism and the exploitation of cheap colonial labour. In the old empires it was control of the seas that mattered. Today it’s simply economic muscle that calls the shots and it’s the South that’s growing stronger daily. Whether domination by economic interests from Mumbai or Beijing is more comfortable for Britain than shared sovereignty with European neighbours is a question that perhaps only time can answer.

*World 3.0: Global Prosperity and How to Achieve It is available on Amazon and through good booksellers.