The last time I spoke with Sid DeBoer, his two key suppliers, GM and Chrysler, had recently declared bankruptcy and his company, Lithia Motors, was recovering from its worst year ever. But he had a plan to turn things around. A year and a half later, it seems to be working.
Can a state agency create jobs without wasting taxpayer money? Business Oregon is trying to do exactly that with its new BOOST program. The program approved its first two grants this week, and if you measure such things by jobs promised per dollar invested, this initiative would seem to have potential.
I got the opportunity to sit down with Matt Nees and Bryce Yonker the other day, and within an hour my story idea list had doubled in size. There’s a lot going on with tech innovation in Oregon, and Nees, who’s been president of the Software Association of Oregon for about a year now, and his colleague Yonker have a sharp inside view of not only what’s happening, but also what’s coming.
My conference call with two Jive Software executives on Monday was quite a workout. It isn’t easy to type in synch with people so excited about their prospects that they can barely complete a sentence without flinging out phrases like “ awesome growth trajectory,” “totally stoked” and (avert your eyes now) “kicking ass and taking names.”
It's official: Initiative 28, which would establish a statewide supply system for medical marijuana retail sales, has qualified for the November ballot.
Sohrab Vossoughi is a great person to call if you’re running short on ideas. The high-energy CEO of Ziba Design specializes in big ideas delivered with enthusiasm, and his latest, the Portland Center for Innovation and Design, merits a closer look.
For more than 30 years, Oregon Business has ranked the state’s top 150 private companies by revenue. This year’s results are in, and they are not encouraging. 2009 was one of the worst years ever for the state’s most important private sector employers — if not the worst.
Nike is hiring again in Beaverton after a turbulent recessionary run punctuated by a 5% downsizing last May. The company has posted openings in information technology, operations, human resources, communications and the House of Hoops, has just hired a new Chief Learning Officer and is sprinting into a new fiscal year with momentum and focus.