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Bob's Blog

Introduction

In my non-professional travel and everyday life I often view things through the prism of a site selector. In this blog I share some observations and thoughts that might be of mild interest to the larger community of site selectors, economic developers, and corporate managers. I am not a frequent blogger (more often doing client work), and when I do so I may add a post with a link in LinkedIn. I use my twitter account, @BFSSSS, more as a rant about poor customer service or what seem to me to be non sequiturs. Actually, I have found twitter to sometimes yield quicker responses than via customer service kiosk queues or phone calls when those media are backed up or unavailable, for example after a flight cancellation, while overseas, or after one of several hurricane evacuations from my summer home on the Outer Banks.

A tasty cluster in western NC

The Asheville area of North Carolina has long been noted for its many craft breweries. Recently two large breweries with roots not associated with North Carolina have sprung up. They are the New Belgium and Sierra Nevada breweries. Both are open for tours, have tasting rooms with many specialty brews, and outdoor gardens which are particularly attractive in early autumn.

Their emergence may be an example of Michael Porter's, Harvard economist's, Theory of Business Clusters. A business cluster is a concentration of interconnected businesses, and Porter theorizes that clusters increase their members' competitive position through productivity and innovation. Site selectors often look to identify areas with a cluster to match their project, whereas economic developers seek to identify business clusters within their region in order to target potential business expansion candidates.

Then, again, these two breweries might have been attracted by the water of the French Broad River - said to be one of the three oldest in the world.

Mary Frederickson