What Business Leaders Can Learn from the Amazon-NYC Saga
The debate over Amazon's NYC expansion continues, with the latest salvo a show of support from a group of business, civic and labor leaders. Rather than focus on the deal's death and possible resurrection, we distill three key findings to help other companies grow in cities.
Understand the public opinion landscape. When a December Quinnipiac poll showed nearly 60 percent of NYC voters approved of the Amazon deal, confidence among Amazon executives no doubt went up. But the Q poll doesn't capture the larger opinion landscape for tech, which includes surging national skepticism toward industry leaders such as Amazon. The lesson for big tech: public distrust has constrained your license to operate. In the future, expect knee jerk skepticism, not support, of your efforts.
Elections have (fast moving) consequences. Within hours of Amazon's announcement of Queens as its HQ2 site, then Congresswoman-elect Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted her objection, the first in a chorus of opposition. The lesson: public affairs campaigns do not happen in a vacuum. Strategies must take into account public leadership changes, including elections. Further, if you think you can get ahead of your political opponents with a news release, think again. Social media allows opposition movements to take hold in the hours between the time a story leaks and publishes.
Know your limits. Amazon's HQ2 gambit reminds us of President Obama's 2009 Race to the Top program, a competition among education districts to win federal funding for innovation ideas; and NYC Mayor Bloomberg's 2011 Applied Sciences NYC initiative, a competition among universities to create an engineering campus. But there's one big difference for Amazon: no one elected them. It's a simple point, but perhaps a fundamental truth of American politics: if you haven't been elected, be careful about playing an umpire's role in a public competition. Admiration for business may be in Americans' DNA, but so is a distrust for concentrated power. If you want to take the public interest in your hands, run for office.