This Blog compares how Henry Ford controlled the Rouge River for the Ford Motor Company and Seattle built the Chittenden Canal for both business and citizens

With political power shifting after the mid-term elections, history offers a valuable lens for business leaders. In our book, Detroit vs. Seattle, we explore a similar economic and political transition during the Great Depression and the strategic lessons business executives can apply today. A century ago, the world's largest industry was automotive, and its most successful and influential leaders came from this industry. President Hoover nominated several automotive executiv

Back in September, I announced that I was working on an upcoming book called Detroit vs. Seattle: Stories and Analysis of the Powerful and Empowered, co-authored with Mike Ducker. It looks at two cities that started in similar fashion (lumber centers, ports and shipbuilding; benefiting from early heavy manufacturing but experiencing devastating downturns) but diverged in the latter third of the 20th century. Few people today would notice the early similarities between the cit

I once watched a room full of promising young entrepreneurs pitch their ideas to a panel of gray-haired businessmen judging who had the best business idea. The judges were people whose family businesses those startups would never be allowed to compete with. They selected a winner; everyone clapped. A success story was written about a promising new venture, but the community never felt long-term prosperity. After 20 years in economic development, I've written a lot of those

This blog tries to answer the question do Cities control their own destiny?

I've been researching/writing a book for the last 8 years that compares the history of Detroit vs. Seattle: the Automotive vs. Aviation industries and Ford/GM vs. Boeing. I was going to start heavily blogging about my analysis next year. Given Boeing's continued safety issues, I wanted to share some relevant history and insights on the company to understand the importance of leadership returning to its roots. The history of one of America's most innovative companies After W

I have dug heavily into the labor history of the automotive and aviation industries from the 1900s to the 1950s. As a new labor movement gains momentum, I have 4 hard lessons for today's companies. https://pixabay.com/images/id-424500/ 1. American Entrepreneurs and executives allowed themselves to get too emotional about labor unions. American businessmen overestimated their status in society during the labor union rise from 1920 to the 1930s. These businessmen used violen

In November of 2011, a young President Obama oversaw and gloated over Boeing signing a nearly $38 billion deal with Indonesia's Lion Air, Boeing's most significant order to date[1]. President Obama would leverage this historical sale as a success of his diplomacy in Southeast Asia. He estimated this order would create 100,000 jobs in the US, believing this would impress his voters. Almost 7 years later, one of those planes crashed, killing 189 people. Boeing claimed its plane