Imagine if every city had a Tony Hsieh.
The founder of Zappos.com, the online retailer owned by Amazon.com, is spending $350 million of his own money to transform downtown Las Vegas into a hip urban area filled with entrepreneurs and creative types. Instead of expanding the Zappos headquarters in the suburbs, he's moving its local employees downtown and creating new infrastructure that should lure others to follow.
The project will transform the city and could pay off both for the company and community. It hits home to me following news that Amazon itself plans to build a new 3 million-square-foot office complex in central Seattle, changing a neighborhood of mostly parking lots and low-slung buildings located between downtown and the South Lake Union neighborhood where the company is already housed in leased space.
I admire Hsieh for going big — for thinking about community, not just building more cubes for workers. His project highlights the opportunity for companies to play a role in their communities and the potential benefits. It's also a reminder that companies need to talk about how they make a positive contribution.
Instead of complaining about the business environment, poor educational standards or whatever, Hsieh is doing something about it. What if other big companies followed the example, even if less dramatically. It's great that Amazon has already invested in central Seattle; what if the company made a longer term commitment by hiring an architect to build an iconic urban center, rather than just office space. Think Rockefeller Center.
Zappos already is benefitting from media coverage. Last month I saw the Inc. magazine story above. In the weeks since there have been stories in several newspapers and, incredibly, the reader commentary on local blogs in Las Vegas seems almost all positive.
Now, community-building is hard for most companies in an era where national borders mean less, stakeholders are global and there's relentless short-term financial pressure, not to mention a difficult economy.
But leading companies differentiate themselves and create goodwill in the market through focused comunity involvement. A program to increase awareness of their presence and contribution to the local economy can pay off in terms of recruitment, improved employee morale through community engagement and public understanding of the company.
When I worked at T-Mobile I pushed for a program to emphasize that company's headquarters presence in the Seattle area, but it wasn't a top priority. As a result the company wasn't missed much when AT&T tried to acquire it, even though a takeover likely would've cost thousands of good jobs. A local presence program could have strengthened recruitment, building a stronger customer base and helped make a better place where employees want to live.
Even companies that lack a Hsieh should be following Las Vegas closely.