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I met Tom Szaky, barely 25 years old at the time, and a pure, scrappy, entrepreneur’s entrepreneur, at the 2007 Inc. 500 conference in Chicago.  He spoke before keynote President Clinton and was clearly the more engaging speaker of the two (a pretty tough feat considering how dynamic Clinton used to be). Tom, born in Hungary, grew up in Canada, and dropped out of Princeton to start “The Coolest Startup in America” called Terracycle where every product and its packaging is made out of garbage.  His story is fascinating and the lessons business leaders and public policy-makers can learn from his success are significant. The irony for Portland, one of the greenest cities on Earth, is that most business leaders and policy folks had never heard of him and were quite doubtful that some young kid would be any good as a keynote speaker at the wildly successful Greenlight Greater Portland annual event – thankfully, Tom proved them wrong with an excellent presentation of how to win by innovating and by being greener, better, AND cheaper. I don’t have his presentation electronically, so until I get it, you’ll have to settle for the YouTube video on his Good Morning America and Oprah appearances six weeks prior.

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Greenlight CEO Tim Priest shared this really insightful report of Greater Portland’s economy and which areas are most ripe to recruit for. Here is just a small sampling of the Recommendations from that report:

“Considering the data as a whole, Greenlight has selected these clusters for its first RECRUITMENT initiatives:

1 – ALTERNATIVE/RENEWABLE ENERGY combined with ENVIRONMENTAL SERVICES AND RECYCLING TECHNOLOGY

Rationale:
• Our region has a significant electronic services workforce that can easily transition into renewable energy.
• Significant venture capital is flowing into alternative/renewable energy.
• Our region has momentum in this cluster, with recent announcements from Solar World and other companies, and other regional economic development groups are embracing it.
• The Oregon Legislature recently increased incentives for renewable energy companies.

2- COMPUTER SOFTWARE and IT SERVICES

Rationale:
• The greater Portland region has significant human capital, 20% greater than the national average, in the cluster.
• Software is the number one cluster for venture capital.
• Of the region’s specializations, the cluster provides the highest-paying jobs.
• The region has a strong software community and reputation for both open source and software that interfaces with hardware.
• Portland is strategically positioned to capitalize on the Bay Area and Seattle’s software strengths.

3- DESIGN

Rationale:
• The region boasts big consumer brand names — Nike, Columbia Sportswear, Adidas.
• The cluster is consistent with and feeds the region’s green, sustainable brand image.
• We have a 40% higher concentration of talent in these fields than the national average.”