Continuing this week’s focus on the CoolTown Program...

Do businesses believe in CoolTowns?  Absolutely, as long as CoolTowns attract creative talent.  The world’s largest companies understand this: 

“Keep your tax incentives and highway interchanges, we will go where the highly-skilled people are” - Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina in a presentation to the National Governors Association in 2002.  It shouldn’t be a coincidence that HP’s slogan is “Invent”, nor that HP has a tech-oriented cooltown program of their own.

- Smaller companies do as well:  Charles Brewer, founder of Mindspring/Earthlink, desperately sought a CoolTown to relocate his 3000 employees before he had to settle for an office park.

- Finally, entrepreneurs, free agents, and small business owners seek creative places above all else, for they are the creative class.

OK, we’re committed to becoming a CoolTown.  What are the next steps?