First Word: Look at the Bright Side

Jack Rogers
Jack Rogers
Editor in Chief
Business Facilities

By Jack Rogers
From the September/October 2014 issue

If you’re as tired as we are of hearing about rampaging terrorist threats, gloomy climate-change predictions and virulent diseases, then this issue of Business Facilities is the antidote. It’s nothing but good news, from cover to cover.

We start out with Jenny Vickers’ annual tour of high-tech hubs, which seem to be popping up everywhere, including some locations you wouldn’t expect to be ahead of the curve. The only question left unanswered in this comprehensive review is whether we’ll still call it advanced manufacturing when everyone is doing it.

Along the way, we shift into first gear and roll through the logistics sector in the midst of a banner year; we welcome home call centers that are coming back to the U.S.; and we race across the country from New Jersey to California with a series of reports from states that are grabbing the up arrow and taking off.

Finally—if you still need a lift—nothing beats the “relentless positive action” championed by Gov. Rick Snyder, who gives us the keys to Michigan’s impressive revival in this month’s Governor’s Report. They’re shaking off the rust in the Rust Belt, and anyone who wrote off the Wolverine State during the Great Recession should prepare to eat some crow.