Weekly Briefing: Building Cultural Infrastructure

Building Cultural Infrastructure

Hey all, Hope you’re gearing up for a time of relaxation and reflection over Memorial Day.

About 10 years ago, I sat at a Korea conference at Georgia State University and listened to the story behind Kia’s decision to locate in West Point, a textile town with dreams of revival.

But what stood out was not a tale of rural renaissance, but how the university city of Auburn, Ala., had strategically capitalized on its location between Hyundai’s plant in Montgomery and Kia’s new factory across the border here in Georgia.

Auburn proper didn’t get many of the buildings, but it had exactly what Korean expatriates sent to manage the string of suppliers along Interstate 85 wanted: good schools and nice neighborhoods for their families. It lost the manufacturing battle but won (at least part of) the war for talent; Korean churches, schools and restaurants followed, with their accompanying economic impact.

This week, covering the new Korea-Georgia Dialogue in Columbus, I saw a similar push, prompting reflection on the cross-cultural infrastructure needed for targeted recruitment.

When boosters look around for ways to woo foreign companies, they often focus on hard assets. That’s vital, of course: No company is plunking down a billion dollars on the back of a Korean barbecue joint. But that doesn’t mean you can’t translate the packaging of your product into the language (literal or cultural) of the target customer. And netting one investor often makes it exponentially easier to land another (or even five more). In some ways, it doesn’t matter whether sensitivity is the chicken or the egg, the precursor or the response: But getting there does make a difference.

That’s where Columbus sits now, as we reported in advance of the summit at Columbus State University, a key player in a cross-functional initiative to position the city as a larger Korean investment hub after JS Link decided to put $220 million into the city.

The jury is still out: 20 years after Kia’s announcement may prove be too late to get the desired domino effect of auto suppliers, but Columbus’s push offers an occasion to think about what works in building a relational ecosystem:

Leverage intangibles. Many communities boast available buildings and solid infrastructure; Columbus has Fort Benning, a central node in the U.S.-Korea security alliance, which gives urgency to bilateral commercial collaboration. The infantry base is also a way that many Koreans citizens have been exposed to the city — either as trainees posted here or inbound spouses of returning American troops. That has helped kick-start a welcome wagon for new Korean residents.

Drive cross-functional community buy-in. It’s no surprise that economic development leaders traveled to Korea last year, but more telling of the city’s dedication was the presence of Mayor Skip Henderson and Columbus State University President Stuart Rayfield and their teams. They fanned out to visit universities, JS Link’s factory, Camp Humpreys (the U.S. base home to some 30,000 troops) and Columbus’s new sister city, Jinju. The goal? To show this is not just about fickle politics, but about fundamental partnership, anchored by university-company collaboration.

Southern Hospitality: Necessary, but insufficient. One word that wasn’t spoken at the conference this week? ICE. But the raid on the Hyundai plant, undertaken last September, just before Columbus’s Korea outbound delegation, still looms large in the minds of Korean executives. That puts state- and community-level diplomacy at a premium. Whatever happens at the federal level, companies want committed allies on the ground who can be sources of rational bottom-up pressure on Washington. Southern Hospitality used to be a competitive advantage, but now it’s somewhat commoditized as the foreign investment landscape matures here. Communities that win will eschew transactionalism for rooted relationships.

There’s always a bit of romance in the cross-border investment dance; some luck is usually required. But it’s also easier to catch a wave than to create one, and successful communities will recognize the swells as they start to rise.