Virgin on Business
Is Boeing Going? Maybe
The once unthinkable idea is slowly becoming reality
This article is featured in the November/December issue of Seattle Business magazine. Subscribe here to access the print edition. Ohio and North Carolina figure prominently in the birth of the modern aviation era, and if you dont remember your history, theyll helpfully remind you on their license plates. Yet neither state is today a major…
Dreading the Election of 2021
Seattle is a mess, and the business community appears powerless to change that
Were not even done with the misery of the election of 2020, but its already time to begin contemplating and dreading the election of 2021. The serious dreading will be done by the voters of Seattle, who will be asked to choose a mayor and two at-large positions on the City Council. But voters outside…
Forecasting the Future Is a Peril-Fraught Endeavor
Getting it right about being wrong
This article appears in print in the November 2019 issue. Click here for a free subscription. His presidential bid is more an audition for head of Environmental Protection Agency or secretary of energy in the next Democratic administration. Hes not likely to face a statewide electorate again. this column, August 2019. Oops. See, the trick…
Internet Access and Economic Opportunity Are Joined at the Hip
Collapsing barriers to internet access fuels economic opportunity
This article appears in the September 2019 issue. Click here for a free subscription. The story goes that the northern pacific, while building a rail line westward up the Yakima Valley in the late 1800s, preferred as a depot location not the town of Yakima but a site a few miles north. After much legal…
Washington Has Corporate Cachet But Little National Political Punch
'No one from this state has served as president or vice president'
This article appears in the June 2019 issue. Click here for a free subscription. For sheer power and influence in the national business and economic ring, the Seattle area punches way above its weight class. The concentration of nationally, even globally, significant companies based here would be impressive for a much larger metropolitan area. In…
Washington Manufacturing Is Back in the Saddle Again
The sector faces challenges as it increasingly evolves
This article appears in the May 2019 issue. Click here for a free subscription. This months Seattle Business includes the 10th edition of our annual Washington Manufacturing Awards, launched in a year in which people were conjecturing whether manufacturing, for all its glorious past, had much of a present, never mind a future. The housing-led…