Site location expert
sees opportunities
for Hawaii

Ady gives local policy makers
and executives tips on attracting
businesses to the state

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By Russ Lynch
rlynch@starbulletin.com

When businesses consider Honolulu as a place to locate their operations, the first thing they do is try to eliminate it from their list, an international expert said yesterday.

That's the approach they take to any potential location, being more interested at the start in what's wrong than what's right, said Robert M. Ady, president of site-location consultancy Ady International Co.

"Site selection is a process of elimination," he said.

But knowing that is the first step to meeting that challenge, he told a morning meeting at the Plaza Club, organized by Enterprise Honolulu.

Those interested in attracting companies simply need to have all the answers ready and have government and private-sector economic development organizations all telling the same story with the same set of facts, he said.

The sponsor of the speech, Enterprise Honolulu, was formed last fall as a rebirth of what had been the Oahu Economic Development Board. It consists of businesses interested in promoting the economic development of the community by attracting businesses.

The nonprofit works with the City and County of Honolulu, the state Department of Business, Economic Development & Tourism and other public and private agencies to pool resources that together would make Hawaii an attractive place to do business.

That is precisely the kind of cooperation that professional business site-selection consultants need to see, Ady said. "I don't know if I'd go into an area, frankly speaking, if they didn't have an economic development group," he said.

And both the government and private sectors must be involved.

"When I go into a community and they're not both at the table I've got to ask why," he said. Any hint of some "family feud" between business and government is a major turn-off to a consultant trying to find the best move for a business, he said.

Right now, said Ady, the opportunities are great for Hawaii because much of the required attitude is already in place.

Hawaii does have an educated and capable work force.

Modern communications eliminate Hawaii's geographical disadvantages. The Internet is a great tool that Hawaii knows how to use, he said.

And the proximity to Asia is a plus, with countries such as China and South Korea aggressively expanding.

Hawaii's time zone becomes more attractive as more companies work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, he said.

And internal changes have led to a more positive attitude toward economic development than he saw on his last visit, Ady said.

"In some terms, you were kind of neophytes" four years ago, where it came to economic development, he said.

Ady has helped major Japanese corporations set up manufacturing plants in the United States and he has orchestrated major internal moves, such as Boeing Corp.'s decision to move its headquarters away from its Seattle manufacturing operation to Chicago.

But he said many moves these days are smaller, involving fewer people but possibly more money coming into the local economy because of the changed nature of business.

He said Hawaii would do well to make direct approaches to site-location consultants like him, and not just to the heads of the corporations. That's not so hard to do, he said, because the vast majority of site-selection work is done by fewer than 20 consultancy firms in the nation.

Business site-location consultants pay no attention to surveys that rank states or communities according to how friendly or unfriendly they are to business.

To tell a client business that it should not move to, say, Hawaii because some survey says it is not a place that likes business is not doing your job, he said.

Businesses are looking for several things, he said.

The first is "risk minimization," and he said he doesn't mean physical or security risks but a need to know the move will have long-term support from the community and government.

Next, site consultants hate uncertainty or hedging. "If I ask, how many people graduated in electrical engineering" from the local university each year, "and they say, 'I don't know,' I have to conclude there aren't many," he said. And not being able to answer takes the site a step closer to elimination, Ady said.

All economic development organizations must get together and make sure they are giving out the same information, he said. And an economic development Web site must be made for the user not for the satisfaction of the Web designer.

"We want information, not pizzazz," Ady said.