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GE's Move To Boston Could Revive Local Tech Business Ambitions (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Networkworld: Two-hundred people will run General Electric from the company's new headquarters in the Fort Point part of the city and another 600 will work in its labs. According to Immelt's vision, the headquarters will be open for interacting with startups and academia in which GE is both convener and catalyst. In an interview with Boston's business and political elite yesterday, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of GE Jeff Immelt said GE moved to Boston for two reasons: to win the Internet of Things and rethink how companies work in this winner-take-all technology and innovation economy. If GE's top management can add the missing ingredient by transferring the know-how for growing businesses to billions of dollars in quarterly revenue, Boston could regain its preeminent position for technology business leadership equal to its reputation for leading-edge research and development.
Boston won't be a tech leader again. They're not culturally diverse enough to attract top talent and top companies. Silicon Valley is very welcoming to Asians, Hispanics, homosexuals
You mean Boston, in the first state that legalized gay marriage isn't welcoming to homosexuals? Massachusetts is in the top quintile of states for proportion of Asians too.
The main reason the Boston area is a better incubator of tech is the same reason it lost the pre-eminence it enjoyed among American cities in the colonial era: it's too cramped and expensive for industry to grow. So it usually makes sense once your company is a going concern to move it elsewhere.
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As someone with relatives 2 streets away from their old headquarters in Fairfield, CT, the move to Boston is predicated on two things:
1) the college labor pool in MA is more plentiful, the cost of living is lower, and thus it's a cheaper labor cost to GE for entry level college intern and recent grad talent
2) CT state government significantly raised corporate taxes last year, and GE said they would move if they did. This is just following through on that promise.
And surprisingly, Taxachusttes is actually 25/50 in income taxes, while CT is top 5/50 for income and top 2/50 for estate taxes.
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-28/why-ge-spurned-connecticut-for-massachusetts