How important is it that we continue to incubate small businesses so they become thriving companies? Michael Porter, co-chair of the Competitiveness Project and the Harvard Business School, declared on CNBC’s Squawk Box. “We’re stalled in America. Our performance, economic performance, on many metrics is worse than we’ve seen in many generations. I mean not […]
Despite the best efforts of candidates Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, manufacturing continues to get killed in the business press. In Monday’s debate, Clinton even used a term endearing to government and policy wonks — “advanced manufacturing” — to promote its importance. But business media remains generally unimpressed. It’s more popular today for local and […]
The U.S. Department of Commerce channels resources to American manufacturing through NIST, the National Institute of Standards and Technology and its Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) network. It sounds like layers of government bureaucracy, but the MEP network is actually a diverse public-private mix, collectively pursuing the objective of supporting U.S. manufacturing. Today every state in […]
I look back on my column from a year ago — CompanyWeek at two years: Six takeaways as manufacturing surges — and grimace. I’ve learned so much in a year. With that in mind, as CompanyWeek begins year four, here are six new takeaways based on a fresh look at last year’s conclusions and what […]
If foundries and fabricators are the heart and soul of manufacturing, today craft and lifestyle brands are its upstart rebels, tipping over convention and carving fresh tracks through and around an ecosystem never designed with its interests in mind. Just the opposite. Craft food and beverage manufacturers have labored against a bulwark of industrial competition […]
In three years of profiling Colorado manufacturers and two years writing about Utah’s sector, it’s easy to understand why economic developers from each state view the other as primary competition. The attributes of each sector are strikingly similar. It’s hard, for example, to distinguish between aerospace and bioscience contract manufacturers fabricating for high-profile OEMs; between […]
Hillary Clinton’s nod to Denver’s Knotty Tie at the Democratic National Convention — or was it Neil Borin’s Carrot & Gibbs? — is only the latest example of how manufacturing is influencing the 2016 general election. (Given U.S. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew’s visit to Knotty Tie last March, which we chronicled, she probably meant the […]
Data continues to trickle out this summer that ranks and grades states for business and manufacturing prowess. It’s been a better month for the region even as analysts and journalists continue to struggle to get a handle on a fast-changing manufacturing sector. In CNBC’s annual ranking of America’s Top States for Business 2016 Utah grabbed […]
“There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.” Mark Twain’s frequently used quote was my first thought when reading the Conexus Indiana 2016 Manufacturing & Logistics Report Card for the United States. Covered in a recent column by CompanyWeek‘s Bart Taylor, the report gave Colorado manufacturing a D grade for overall manufacturing […]
In Colorado we’re ruminating over two reports released last month that rank the state’s manufacturing sector poorly. Tim Heaton, president of the Colorado Advanced Manufacturing Alliance, follows up on a column I wrote about the Conexus Indiana 2016 Manufacturing & Logistics Report Card for the Unites States that gave Colorado a ‘D’ in overall health […]