According to the “WSJ” The world’s two most valuable technology companies—Apple Inc. and Amazon.com Inc.—are shopping for cities in which to build new corporate campuses. But with one of them, you would hardly know it.
Apple Chief Executive Tim Cook this month met secretly with North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper to discuss possibly putting a major new customer-service facility in the Raleigh-Durham area, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The undisclosed meeting was tucked into a very public agenda that included delivering Duke University’s commencement address, tweeting from Duke’s basketball stadium and taking selfies with shoppers at an Apple Store.
The secrecy of Apple’s effort contrasts starkly with Amazon’s approach. While Amazon’s effort to find a second headquarters city has proceeded with the fanfare of an Olympics host-city search, Apple is hunting for its newest U.S. location with the stealthy deliberateness it employs in developing a new iPhone.
Since it announced plans in January for the new campus to house technical support staff, Apple has said little about the effort. Mr. Cook has limited his public comments, saying during a March TV interview only that Apple wouldn’t be discussing its search because it doesn’t believe in the “beauty contest” approach.
An Amazon-like competition creates “a case where you have one winner and a bunch of losers,” he said, while Apple’s process is designed to avoid “putting people through a ton of work to select one” city. “The best things we can do in business is find the win-win,” the Apple CEO said.
Apple’s approach has advantages, says Jay Biggins, executive managing director at Biggins Lacy Shapiro & Co., a corporate location strategy firm. By limiting publicity, companies can exert more control over the process, avoid being overrun with outreach from cities and focus negotiations to get more of what they want, he says.
The confidential search is more conventional.
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