Seattle and the elixir of growth

In some moods, I think that Seattle's business renaissance has peaked. Starbucks is contracting, Microsoft is stumbling, Boeing is losing bids, Safeco is sold, and Washington Mutual is sinking. Has our formula of rapid growth spreading across the globe run into the wall?

But then I look at the front page of today's "Marketplace" section of The Wall Street Journal, where three of the four stories are about Seattle-based companies. There's the story of Microsoft's scramble in the executive suite, with the sudden departure of Kevin Johnson, formerly in charge of the Yahoo merger campaign; Costco reporting an earnings squeeze as the prices for merchandise are rising faster than they can pass along costs to its value-seeking customers; and Amazon doubling its second-quarter profits as customers shift from shopping by car to shopping by online.

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Can Bill Gates also reinvent capitalism?

Michael Kinsley, the founding editor of Slate and a half-time Seattle resident, is involved in an interesting new project. It's a Web site gathering quality commentary about "Creative Capitalism." It's well worth looking at.

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A who's who of Microhoo tells the backstory to The Wall Street Journal

Wall Street Journal reporters Matthew Karnitschnig and Robert A. Guth today report that Microsoft is still in pursuit of Yahoo — Yahoo's search business, anyway — and is trying to team up with another media company, perhaps Times Warner or News Corp., to do a deal. Any day now we expect Microsoft to approach Crosscut, so anxious seem the Redmondians to get a piece of Yahoo. But today's WSJ story is much more than a few paragraphs about another twist in CEO Steve Ballmer's obsession. It's the backstory, an exclusive account, something which the paper typically prints the day a deal is announced. Maybe the editors got tired of waiting for closure. Aw, screw it, let's just run it now.

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A week of weakonomics

If you look away from the Sonics trial for a moment, you can see warning signs that the seemingly immune local economy is actually pretty precarious.

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The Sonics trial pulls aside a political curtain

The trial of the Sonics had a few revelations this week, though no clear indication of which way it will come out. Perhaps the most interesting aspect was the way heavy political lifting is done these days. It takes on the form of backstage public-private partnerships, with lawfirms doing a lot of the work and strategizing, so that elected officials have some distance and deniability if it doesn't work. This is not shocking news, but we did get some rare specifics.

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Fired up and ready to go — home

The state Democratic convention in Spokane was both inspiring and stultifying. Among the delegates who bothered to show up, there was passion, tedium, booze, sunshine, and a desire for change.

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Outsourcing is so yesterday, or last night, or whatever time it is in Bangalore

Nonsourcing is the way to go. And to ensure quality service, this article may be monitored for quality control or training purposes.

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A Seattle software exec makes sure that the buffalo don't roam

In the 19th century, tourists used to slaughter bison herds from passing trains, blasting the big beasts into near extinction just for fun. That ugly tradition is echoed in the recent massacre of buffalo in Colorado, which has also touched off a classic confrontation over rights between two ranchers. The Northwest connection: The Seattle Post-Intelligencer's John Cook points out that the man behind the recent massacre is the chairman and CEO of one of Seattle's top software companies, Jeff Hawn of Attachmate. A warrant has been issued for his arrest.

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Educated abroad, they are France's new foreign legion

Seattle's French Underground: Today's graduates are more likely to have studied abroad, and they're more open to leaving France for career opportunities — glamorous and humble. Many of them are settling in metro Puget Sound. Part 3

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Parlez-vous a software language?

Seattle's French Underground: Thousands have invaded metro Puget Sound, many of them in search of opportunities and attitudes in technology that simply don't exist at home in France. Part 1

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What made the Seattle style of business a success

As civic icons like Safeco drift away from their Puget Sound roots, here's a look at the components of a Seattle way of doing business that built up such brands. The key was motivated employees. The poison was rapid growth.

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Shanghai Surprise

A group with Northwest ties is aced out of a pavilion bid for Expo 2010 in China. Instead, the U.S. State Department has given the go-ahead to a team with connections to Warner Brothers and a major D.C. law firm. Now all they have to do is raise $80 million.

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Conspicuous Seattle

A town of modest pleasures has become a city of cringe-inducing excess, even in the little things like coffee, booze, and movie tickets.

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Recession alert: Put Oregon on the danger list

Marple's Pacific Northwest Letter, a bible of the Northwest economy, is predicting that Oregon, "if not yet in recession, it likely soon will be." The reasons: sectors like lumber exposed to the homebuilding recession; continued manufacturing decline in computer chips and electronic instruments, which have not fully recovered since the dot.com meltdown; and overall manufacturing decline since mid-2006.

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Cheers not jeers to Speaker Chopp on the Microsoft tax concession

The Columbia Basin Herald this past week characterized House Speaker Frank Chopp as being a Forrest Gump, "stupid is as stupid does" villain for opposing big proposed tax breaks for Microsoft and Yahoo. The tax concession, those companies said, were necessary to keep them from fleeing Grant County, where they have huge server farms. The requests were similar to the $3.2 billion in breaks Boeing Co. got from Governor Gary Locke and the Legislature when it threatened to take some of its assembly operations elsewhere.

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Jean Godden on Seattle: My, how you've changed!

The longtime columnist for Seattle's dailies casts an affectionate eye over the many sweeping transformations of the city, and wonders if all the newcomers will learn to cherish the uniqueness of the place.

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We're not as mega-rich as we thought

All you folks seething with envy over the fabulous wealth in the region, you can calm down a little. Not only is Bill Gates III demoted to No. 3 on Forbes' recent list of the world's billionaires; the Northwest, by my count, only places eight folks in the top 500. Nor does America hog all the wealth, as you might have imagined. Of the top 25 billionaires, only four are from the U.S. of A. They are: Warren Buffett (tops the list at $62 billion), Gates (third at $58 billion), Sheldon Adelson (the Las Vegas developer, 12th at $26 billion), and Oracle's Lawrence Ellison (14th at $25 billion). The country with the most billionaires in the top 10? India (with four).

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What gives Seattle so much global sizzle?

An article in the February 19 Singapore Straits Times (registration required) makes the striking observation that Seattle alone has produced approximately the same number of leading global brands as the combined population (3 billion) of Asia. On the Seattle list are: Microsoft, Amazon, Starbucks, Boeing, UPS, Nordstrom, Washington Mutual, Costco, and Safeco. The list from Asia (excluding Japan) is: Singapore Airlines, Lenovo, Samsung, Hundai, San Miguel, Arcelor-Mittal, Oberio, Cathay Pacific, Acer, and Thai Airways.

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Slate goofs; Paul Allen does make the list of top 60 philanthropists

An earlier blog item on America's top philanthropists noted that the usual Northwest big donors, notably Bill and Melinda Gates and Paul Allen, were missing this past year. Turns out Slate had missed Allen's $46 million in gifts last year, putting him 49th on the list (since corrected). A spokesman for Allen notes that the philanthropist and Microsoft co-founder has contributed nearly $1 billion in his lifetime to various charitable causes.

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Seattle has a distinct and remarkable tech ecosystem

In response to Margaret O'Mara's article about Silicon Valley and Seattle, let's agree that everybody understands that we must build upon our advantages and preserve our distinctiveness, as she proposes. Including John Markoff of The New York Times, who spends a lot of time both in Seattle and in Silicon Valley, and knows each region well. Let's be sure not to caricature what he said. He simply observed that Seattle is exhibiting some of the entrepreneurial success of Silicon Valley; he described some of the evidence and explored some of the reasons. (By the way, it's worth noting that he wrote a much longer piece — it got whacked severely at the last minute due to a layout change, relegating much of his work and many of his insights to the bit bucket.) We have managed to develop a tech ecosystem here — a feat that has eluded many other regions of the nation. It's distinctly our own, and it's pretty remarkable.

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