Leader Garden-Helping firms Cultivate and Grow their Leaders

Montreal’s loss is Memphis’s gain. Electrolux AB, the world’s second-biggest home appliance maker, said yesterday its decision to shut its l’Assomption plant by late 2013 and shift production to a new $190-million factory in Tennessee is final.

L’Assomption, off the eastern tip of Montreal Island, loses its principal private-sector employer and 1,300 jobs. Electrolux will hire 1,250 employees in Memphis to produce new-generation built-in and specialty kitchen appliances in a new 700,000 square-foot plant.

Memphis city and county have provided the land in the Frank Pidgeon Industrial Park at no cost. They are putting up $20 million U.S. each for such infrastructure as roads and sewers and the state is kicking in another $92 million, local filings said. Another $400 million will be invested by suppliers.

The new plant, starting up in mid-2012 and slated for full production in 2013, will mesh closely with Electrolux’s existing kitchen-range plant in Springfield, Tenn., with a workforce of 3,000.

via Electrolux jobs moving to Memphis.

While I am happy for Memphis and my home state of Tennessee, economic development can sometimes be a “zero-sum” game when some lose while others win.

Efficiency will continue to rule the day and those who believe in a socialist economy will do well to see how these jobs moved from a strongly socialist, union environment to a free-market, non-union market in a sun-belt state.

Amazon.com Inc. has made final its commitment to build new distribution centers that will create up to 1,400 jobs in Chattanooga and neighboring Bradley County, economic development officials said Monday.

A statement from the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development said the Seattle-based online company plans to spend a total of up to $139 million building the two facilities. The jobs are expected to be created in the next three years and there will be hundreds of other peak season jobs.

The new distribution centers are expected to be operating before the 2011 holiday season at Enterprise South Industrial Park in Chattanooga — near Volkswagen’s new assembly plant that starts production in 2011 — and on State Route 308 in Bradley County.

Amazon.com’s North American Operations vice president Dave Clark said in the statement that the new facilities in Tennessee will allow the Seattle-based online company to “serve customers more quickly and efficiently.”

via Amazon.com moving ahead with centers in SE Tenn. – Bloomberg.

A great Christmas present for Chattanooga and the entire state of Tennessee.

Congrats!

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook less than 10 years ago on the campus of Harvard as a 19 year old student.  He is the Time man of the year in 2010.  What an amazing story!

You can read the entire story by clicking here, but just consider these statistics:

• over one half billion people are members of Facebook
• it exists in over 75 languages
• almost half of the members log in every day
• the age spread has quickly gone from only 20 and 30-something’s to a much wider age distribution
• the open source code allows others to write applications that mesh with Facebook quite easily

Facebook is an amazing phenomenon that is right in the middle of the Social Media revolution, and I do mean revolution.

Stay tuned for more here on how Social Networks are changing the basic nature of business.

Mark Zuckerberg, congratulations!

(To read a full comparison of the Nook and the Kindle, see Rich Jaroslovsky’s review.)

NOOK

The Good: Includes an additional color screen, permits friends to borrow downloaded books from one another, and allows free browsing of entire books when the user is in a Barnes & Noble store.

The Bad: Slow to boot up, format text, and display it on the screen. Color screen and Wi-Fi connection drain battery life.

KINDLE

The Good: Lighter and faster than the Nook, it boasts longer battery life, and each of its features has been thoroughly tested in the market.

The Bad: The physical keyboard seems clunky and unnecessary. And it lacks some clever features, such as lending rights.

via Kindle vs. Nook – BusinessWeek.

The primary goal of your search engine optimization (SEO) is to drive relevant people that are interested in your industry or company to your website.  If you follow SEO than you know how fast things change.  You also know how hard it can be to keep all with these changes.

SEO is actually a relatively simple technique that requires small changes based on major changes the search engines announce. I bold major changes because the changes really need to be major to affect your overall website rankings and SEO strategy.

Here are nine SEO techniques that you should always follow regardless of the changes the search engines are continuously making.

via 9 SEO Insights You Must Follow.

This article has some really great insight that I encourage all to read.  It is especially valuable if you are a blogger in search of a larger, growing network of readers.

Enjoy!

Plants take advantage of quantum mechanics to harvest sunlight with near-perfect efficiency—though only roughly 2 percent of that capture sunlight ultimately gets stored as chemical energy. Now scientists are studying how this light-harvesting step of photosynthesis is optimized by nature to learn how to mimic it in engineered systems for use in solar cells or artificial leaves that produce fuels directly from the sun.

via Power Plants: Engineers Mimic Photosynthesis to Harvest Light Energy: Scientific American.

A really fascinating article that I encourage you to read!

Bryan Daniels has been named president and CEO of the Blount Partnership, the Blount County development organization announced on Monday.

The Blount Partnership includes the Blount County Chamber of Commerce, Chamber Foundation, Economic Development Board and the Smoky Mountain Convention & Visitors Bureau.

“The Joint Operating Committee recently voted to appoint Bryan to the president and CEO position of the Partnership based on his credentials and his past work with each of the partner organizations. He has served our organization well in an interim position since July 2010,” Matt Murray, chair of the Economic Development Board, said in a prepared statement.

via Bryan Daniels named president of Blount Partnership » Knoxville News Sentinel.

Congrats to Bryan on his new role!

Governor Beebe speaks on Science, Technology, Engineering , and Math (STEM) education and the Museum of Discovery Science Center.

“This past week, I was on site as the Museum of Discovery began construction on its new Science Center. The museum, located in downtown Little Rock, has long provided a stimulating learning environment for Arkansas students and their families. Its interactive, hands-on exhibits and engaging events allow students to explore science, math, engineering, and technology in interesting and exciting ways.

via Arkansas’s Governor Beebe Focuses On STEM Education | Gov Monitor.

I am glad to see another governmental leader make STEM education an important initiative.

Our country will continue to lose our competitive edge unless we produce more Scientists and Engineers.  It just adds up.

Speculation that life has been discovered beyond Earth exploded on the Internet after NASA announced plans for a press conference involving scientists who study unusual life forms.

The briefing, set for 2 p.m. Thursday, focuses on a paper being published in the journal Science, which has not been made public.

But when it is released, the paper will be a disappointment to those speculating about its contents. It does not report finding life outside of Earth.

via NASA press conference about alien life? An E.T. rumor. – CSMonitor.com.

Officials in Chattanooga are deciding if they will approve a tax break for a planned distribution center that a Chamber of Commerce executive says would create 1,250 jobs.

No one is naming the business.

The Cleveland Daily Banner reports that plans for a similar hush-hush project that would create hundreds of jobs in Bradley County are being discussed by officials in Cleveland.

WTVC-TV reports that Hamilton County commissioners were asked Wednesday to put a proposed “payment in lieu of taxes” for an unnamed business on their agenda for next week.

via Chattanooga officials consider tax break for secret project » Knoxville News Sentinel.