How Seattle can be a blueprint for aspiring tech hubs across the US
Jan 2, 2020, 8:14 AM
The Amazon Spheres in Seattle. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
(AP Photo/Elaine Thompson)
Seattle numbers itself among the nation’s biggest tech hubs, something one group hopes to use as a blueprint for other cities across the U.S., while preventing outsourcing of jobs to other countries.
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“Seattle is an expensive place to live and work, and so (tech jobs are) moving work to places like the Philippines, or Shanghai, or Tel Aviv, or even Vancouver,” Rob Atkinson told KIRO Radio’s Dave Ross. “We ought to be able to give them opportunities to move those jobs to Cleveland, St. Louis, Pittsburgh, Birmingham.”
Atkinson is the founder and president of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation, a think tank devoted to devising methods by which other cities can share in the prosperity of tech hubs like Seattle.
He believes that Seattle could act as a blueprint for how a city can thrive in an environment of skilled workers and highly-paid tech jobs. Beyond that, he argues that a little government intervention can go a long way toward helping cities in America’s heartland see similar growth.
“If the federal government does a competition, and it takes 10 places or eight places, and we know over 10 years they’re going to get more money for research universities, for venture capital, for high tech incubators, it makes it a lot easier for those companies to say, ‘You know what? Let’s put that next facility in Columbus rather than someplace in India or China,” Atkinson described.
And while this would be creating jobs and opportunities well outside Seattle city limits, he still sees a larger benefit as many of the companies headquartered in the city thrive elsewhere.
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“Ultimately this this would be good for Seattle,” he argued. “Also, for Seattle companies like Microsoft after Amazon or Boeing or the like, they’re going to be better off if more of their jobs are here in the U. S. than in other countries. That’s going to help them, and it’s going to build a stronger overall U.S. economy.”
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