From the Desk of the Editor in Chief
It is the mission of Business Facilities to present the corporate site selector with all of the critical information that is needed to choose the most conducive location for a new facility, an expansion or a relocation.
We do this throughout the year with our monthly compilation of incisive features and departments, but we take special pride in the presentation of our annual Rankings Report, a comprehensive analysis of the fierce competition between the states-and between leading metropolitan areas-in the race to be your location of choice.
Like the states themselves, our Rankings Report continues to adapt to meet the complex challenge of today’s shape-shifting economic development environment. We constantly are expanding and enhancing the criteria applied to each rankings category.
This year, we completely overhauled the scoring template used for Biotechnology Strength, to make sure that all localities were credited for a diverse range of biotech initiatives and incentives. We also expanded the criteria for our Greenest States ranking.
As usual, there were plenty of surprises in the 2008 Rankings Report, including Pennsylvania’s emergence as a biotech powerhouse and the absence of some former class leaders from the top tier of our state education rankings. We’ll attribute the former to strong state leadership and the latter to…well, maybe the surf was up during Spring break. South Dakota, meanwhile, continues to chisel its name on our Mt. Rushmore of top Business Climate and Quality of Life listings.
We offer hearty congratulations to all of the top-ranked localities, and a word of caution: Don’t get too comfortable-the competition for the 2009 rankings already has begun!
