Move over Bangalore. Step aside Shanghai. The Indian and Chinese cities' status as the hottest spots for information technology and manufacturing development may be ending. According to a recently released report, American cities like Madera and Elmira are emerging hot locations for development.
Rising costs, labour shortages, and high turnover now plague cities like Bangalore and Shanghai, and others like Bucharest, Budapest, Beijing, and St Petersburg. A group of prominent site selection experts in corporate real estate has concluded that investors' dollars are better spent elsewhere.
Corporate real estate executives are looking for solid infrastructure, a bilingual labour pool, colleges and universities creating an emerging talent pool, and the presence of a few foreign companies to lure new development.
Dennis Donovan, principal of Wadley-Donovan-Gutshaw Consulting said, "The capitals of outsourcing and the flat earth have given way to new spots which are ripe for development. For the money, you're smart to invest in Belfast and Ho Chi Minh City, or Chengdu, China, and Kosice, Slovakia."
Asia expert, Dennis Meseroll, a director of location consulting firm Tractus Asia Limited, noted that, "as investment floods the Mumbais and Guangzhous of this world, wages go up for managers and front line workers, attrition rates spike and a talent shortage develops."
Len Rust is publisher of The Rust Report