“AS A CORPORATE ADVISOR, my job is to advise companies where to invest. The CEOs of major companies are now so busy that unless you are on the short list of investment opportunities, you will not even be considered as a possibility. There are dozens of regions and cities that would like to attract the capital and corporate presence of my clients . . . to make it to the short list, you must offer real value, and, ultimately, capture the investor’s imagination.”
Kenichi Ohmae, strategy guru and former partner of McKinsey Japan, offered local and regional governments this grim prescription at the turn of the new millennium. Ohmae had been on the global speaking circuit for years, and by the 1990s, most local governments had already swallowed this bitter pill. Mayors around the world had been soliciting the advice of consultants and strategists in competition for the attentions of capital, a practice that has continued into this century. From the aerial view of knowledge-economy employers, Melbourne is London is Johannesburg; Chicago could easily be Portland or Austin or Los Angeles. The perceived interchangeability of cities left governments in the position of needing to retool their culture, imagery, services and infrastructure to appeal to companies, the fickle tastes of their creative class employees, and management consultant intermediaries. Cities were being re-envisioned not for their cultural or civic possibilities but for precarious places in the corporate imaginary.
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