things that were done over 30 years persistently and as the county executive said with collaboration. one, we did not stop doing what we were good at which was making things, financing it and providing the energy that you needed to operate it. those three industries have been reinvented through innovation on three of our core sectors in our regional economy. two, we levered world class university and health care institutions in the billion dollars a year research that's done there to create knowledge industries that didn't exist 30 years ago. software, i.t., robotics, health care, life sciences, medical devices, et cetera, and today 30 years later there's over 1,600 technology companies in the region and three, probably the most surprising to people, we invested in the place. we went from hell with the lid taken off which is how a british author described pittsburgh in the '40s to the most livable city in america the last four years in a row. we invested in air, the water,

the riverfront, housing, education, health care, recreation, et cetera, et cetera, and for those of you who have never been to pittsburgh or haven't been there in the last ten years, i guarantee you will be shocked if you come and visit the place, and as a result we're here today invited to this discussion, and we're stunned and proud. so with that we'll turn it over to greg. >> great, dennis. next up is greg babe. greg is the president and ceo of the bayer corporation usa and bayer material science and the chair of the greater pittsburgh chamber of commerce. he's also vice chair of the allegheny conference on community development. greg, great to have you with us. >> thanks, nick, and thanks, everyone, for coming today and to the chamber. bayer corporation is the u.s. arm of the global buyer or bayer organization. we have three businesses, one which you probably would recognize from a product that maybe you took this morning with bayer 81 milligram aspirin, but we have a health care business which -- which develops products

that help to diagnose and to cure and prevent disease. we also have less known to many people a -- a large crop science, bayer crop science business which really focuses on enhancing yields, crop yields as well as securing the food supply, and finally we have a material science business which is a high-tech polymer business that applies and develops and does research in the application of these materials to improve energy efficiency, to improve security as well as to make our everyday lives simpler. unlike chris we're not newcomers to pittsburgh. also a surprise with such a prominent health care play, pittsburgh has been our headquarters for over 50 years now. we started there with a handful of people in one building and have grown with the city from that period of time to -- to

2,700 employees in the pittsburgh area. we have more than 50 sites across the country. i have 13,000 employees in the united states. across those 50 sites, 2,700 of those sit at pittsburgh and in the only are they doing headquarters type of work, but they are also doing basic research in medical devices and high-tech polymers. we have -- we've stayed for over 50 years in pittsburgh because of a tremendous work ethic, because of the universities. i mentioned we do basic research there, so the universities are critical to bayer science for a better life. that is our tag line. innovation severing that we do, and pittsburgh is a great place to innovate. >> great, great. greg. so, remember, you have pieces of paper on your -- on your tables so we encourage you to write down questions and submit them, but i want to draw together a couple of threads, some things

that i -- that i was hearing from -- from all the participants. one, as the importance of workforce to the success of the area. now this is something tom talked about in his remarks in the importance of human capital. so maybe, mike, we can start with you and then if others want to chime in. when you think about that, about the workforce issue, there are a couple of components. one could be -- tom mentioned immigration. one is just bringing in people who can do the jobs that are necessary. another is trying to develop the -- the workforce that's already there. what are the things that cities wi can do to try to improve the workforce situation so that businesses are attracted to come there or that businesses can grow organically that are already there? >> i think first and foremost, obviously work very closely with the school system to make sure that there's zero tolerance in the community for failing schools or failing systems, and that's one thing that we've been working to really improve upon.

in denver, i've come in. we've created the education compact which brought together the private sector, higher education partners to help us define really some goals, some actionable goals that we can make an impact on, but let me just tell that you it started even a few years before then when denver passed what we call the denver pre-school program tax and 1/12% of a tax, state sales tax goes to support and to ensure that every 4-year-old in denver can go to pre-school or early childhood education program. that is our way of saying we believe if we're going to build a strong workforce that starts with our very young and making sure that they are school ready when they enter into kindergarten at age 5, when we know they enter into kindergarten prepared and ready to hit the ground running, they typically are reading at, as a matter of fact i can tell you, the first third grade class just left third grade on their way to fourth grade. 80% of our kids, kids that we

invested in in early childhood education first time read at -- were tested at proficient at their grade level or above, 80% of them, which as you can imagine far outpaces those kids who are not -- did not go through our program in denver. so we're making a commitment through the whole pipeline to make sure our kids are school ready, making sure that they are proficient at third grade reading and that they are graduating, and that helps to signal hopefully to our private sector partners and those who are prospecting to look at denver, that we're committed to building a strong prepared workforce. >> i know that's got to be music to margaret's ears right there. maybe, rip, how about you in pittsburgh, in addition focusing on education which is historical strength of pittsburgh. what are some other things? >> it is at the higher level, but it is also, as i go around on a daily basis visiting companies with our economic development director, the one thing i hear about is workforce development. that is the number one issue by far, and one of the things we

try to do is we try to partner, again, as we talked about collaboration being whatever our customers need to try to give them the help that they need and what they need typically is workforce training. so we've developed our community college system to really be very flexible in the curriculum that we provide with our partners, so if there's a need for companies to have welders, for example, we have a welding program at one of our community college campuses. if it has to do with lab technicians or keck call testing, whatever that might be, and we have a burgeoning energy industry in western pennsylvania and allegheny count we the shale play of natural gas right where we are. and there's been a great influx and a great growth in people in those jobs, but they need to be trained. they need to be trained to go out and work on the natural gas rig and be able to do the piping and the controls and the testing that need to be done so we try to provide our community college and work with our -- work with our universities to try to

provide and meet those needs. as i mentioned before, again, our trade unions have some of the best training facilities in the country to -- to bring people -- bring people along. >> and how does that -- on the community college front, are you going out to the companies, or are they coming to you? how does it work so that you're developing a curriculum that's going to work for them for the next five, ten years? >> a little bit of both. we do go to them and ask them what they are going to need and so many of our companies talk about the fact that they will be hiring 100 workers over the next three years or 30 workers a year for the next five years, so we find out what they need, and we talk to them. it really goes both ways. they often bring it to us, but we go out and talk to them. >> okay. we've got a question from the audience here which is about small business. now i know there are a lot of cities and metros that think it's really important to attract a big whale, get a big company to move a huge base of operations say to their area, but there's another way of looking at it which is focusing on small business. maybe dennis, we could start

with you, and then if others want to chime in. how do you think of small business as a focus for creating jobs in pittsburgh and the surrounding area? >> the question highlights a very important point and that is that the attractions from out of region get the most publicity, but in any healthy economy 80%, 90% of the jobs are going to be created either by new startups or by existing companies that are expanding. attractions are important, too, but they are never going to dominate your economy, so as a region, if you're not focusing on small and medium-sized businesses which do continue to create most of the jobs in america, you're going to have a problem. in our case it's a couple of different things. maybe the most noteworthy is that we have this billion dollar a year research set of institutions that are doing all this wonderful world class research. we've worked very hard over the last 30 years to commercialize more and more of that research, and that involves the universities' active participation and transfer and

policy operations. it involves early stage places, incubators, if you will, where companies can get started and be nurtured, and maybe most importantly it involves early stage risk capital, venture and angel capital to be able to finance these businesses. and we work very hard in a public/private way, state, local governments, businesses and the private sector have all been involved in trying to make that work. >> kelly, what about for you guys, the focus on small business? >> small business is -- we actually have a slogan. small business is big business in colorado. 50% or 90% of our businesses have less than 100 employees. the federal government, by the way, defines small as less than 500. for us that's big. so a huge part of our strategy is around how do we help those businesses be successful and hire and drive jobs and ensure that they can grow in colorado. we are the fourth -- the fourth state in the country to have one

employee organization. that means there's one person who works and it's me for this company, and we're the fourth largest number of all the states, we're number four in terms. number of those that we have. and during the recession, one of the things that we looked into is why is that, and we believe, because we have a more educated workforce what, tended to happen as people might have lost a job is people started to start their own business and create that jump and we think allowing an environment that allows people to take the risk and have the capacity to have the workforce to do it makes all the difference in ensuring that you have less unemployment as well. >> i've got an excellent question here from somebody in the audience who points out that both pittsburgh and denver have hosted major events in recent years. denver had the democratic convention and pittsburgh had a g-20 summit. both of those kinds of things cost a lot of money to put on, and so this person is wondering if the costs and disruptions to

the city -- do the benefits of having it there outweigh those, and how should other cities think about these things? >> well, we were very proud that president obama picked pittsburgh to host the g-20 a couple of years ago, talking about cities that had transformed themselves, and it was one of the first examples of what we were, and one of the things that the president was talking about was sustain ability and in energy efficiency and in green, and we have really embraced green in our city. lead certified buildings, our convention centered is the highest lead certification that there is, the most in the world, and it draws a lot of people. there ea lot of tourism dollars, a lot of conventions that want to be socially responsible, and they come to pittsburgh because we have the most sustainable, the greenest convention center and our buildings in the downtown, talked about the financial sector. pnc is one of the major, biggest banks in the world, and they are building a $400 million

skyscraper right in the heart of downtown pittsburgh. it's going to be, again, the highest lead certified building in the world, so we have really embraced that. as far as the costs go, yeah. there was inconvenience, but our folks, we were willing to do that because we were so proud that the world was coming to our city, to our region, and we wanted to show it off, so, you know, we were willing to put up with some of the -- you know, inconvenience that comes with security of hosting the world leaders. there was a cost to it, but i think the benefits far outweighed that because it enabled us to show off our city, to talk about some of the things that we have, and it did attract some businesses that we were able to gain from that. >> mayor han could, you want to -- >> if i can just add to that from a pittsburgh perspective as well. >> sure. >> i think rich's point is absolutely right that -- that it has -- it's put a spotlight, very positive spotlight, if you look at what's happened since

g-20 in pittsburgh. the following year we were able to attract the united nations environmental program, unep, to select pittsburgh as the host city in the united states for world environment day, and this particular year we're the host city for one young world which is the davos of the can -- of sort of the younger generation, of the 25s and under, so we're looking at thousands of young -- of young potential employees or migrants into the -- immigrants into pittsburgh who are going to be in pittsburgh this year talking about some very, very meaty issues, so i think that you can leverage these as well in a very intelligent way, and rich and the entire team, each one of these, by the way, back to rich's point about public/private partnerships, each one of these has a partnership associated with it where the private sector is equally engaged as the public

sector. >> you know, you can't -- you can't pay for the kind of marketing exposure your cities get from hosting these sort of events for -- for four or five days denver was the focal point of the entire world. we were about to nominate the first ever african-american for president of the united states. and you can simply not put a dollar figure on the kind of marketing that occurred so that's first and foremost. as a matter of fact, right after the convention, i used to say the good news is that everyone knows about denver now. the bad us? that everyone knows about denver now, and that's -- that's the beauty of the dilemma that you run into. the second thing is i could not have been prouder of the regional cooperation that eme e emerged as a part of the planning, execution and -- of the convention. to walk around denver during that time and to see sheriffs and police officers from all over the metro region proud to represent the metro region to

the world was extreme ly gratifying to watch and then finally the result, the multiplier that occurred, and, you know, as a result today we are representing the baping the. denver is one of the top convention destinations in the world. people are coming. we are sold out for years. still come and ask, but we have minimum convention opportunities or time on the calendar because of the number of conventions that are coming to denver. can you trace that directly back to the convention being in denver and the posh you're we got because of it. >> can i go ahead. >> please, go ahead. >> i happened to be chief of staff for mayor hickenlooper when the dnc came to town and that's one role you don't want to be in. what's so powerful of the dnc, it's so true, presenting your city to the world was a wonderful experience, but i think the most powerful thing

that came out of it from my perspective we changed our own minds as what is possible. we as a region, as a community, began to see ourselves as being able to achieve things that we never thought we could have achieved before and that might be the mother powerful transformation that occurred from that experience because you sort of now believe that there's no limit in what we're capable of doing. >> so, another question from the audience. i'm going to direct this to chris and to greg. it's a question about quality of life issues and how much it matters in boosting growth in the city, but i want to direct it to chris and greg. chris, your company made a decision about where to locate. obviously you had a lot of options. talk a little bit about what sort of quality of life things mattered as you guys went to make that decision, and then -- and then, greg, you've -- you've been in pittsburgh and stayed in pittsburgh for a very long period of time, so obviously you find something about the quality of life there, but you obviously need to recruit people to come

and work there. and what is it that it -- about pittsburgh that you can sell them on so maybe, chris, we'll start with you and then greg. >> yeah. the quality of life in denver is an easy thing to talk about because we're grace and lucky to be in a country with wonderful climate, access to wonderful recreation and lots of folks who move there from other places who genuinely like to engage with each other, so for us quality of life had a number of measures. on the high level the thin things are is the weather supportive? is there -- are there recreation opportunities, but deeper than that, and i think that goes into quality of life for us is how can our teammates engage in the community, and what are they going to find when they engage? are they going to find a welcoming community in a very deep way or in a very shallow way? are we going to find great schools? are they going to find great infrastructure? will they be able to get on their bicycles and ride around the city of denver from one end

to the other comfortably? there's dozens of other factors of quality of life that we considered and the easier ones are obvious. that's why we have a lot of folks who move to colorado and say i don't have a job but i like it here so we have a lot of inbound migration that helps us as an employer looking for talent. we have a community that allows us to engage in a powerful way, and that raises the quality of life for all of our almost 1,000 teammates in denver today. >> all right. since you have the mayor here, i've got to put you on the spot. what would you hike to see improved when it comes to quality of life? >> i wish the weather would get better, i don't know. if the mayor could stop the fires in northern colorado, we'd be really happy because it's getting smokey in denver. look, the greatest thing about -- i think, about our decision here, and it's a big thing to say the greatest, is the collaborative nature of how the city government, state governments, local business leaders have come together, and so to -- to mayor hancock i'd

say this is a continue to invest. there's a huge commitment to collaborating in our business community, not just because you want to get jobs, right. that's important to a community, but because we want to have the right people come and be part of our community and really rightf our company. our company has done that through thousands and thousands of hours. we do it because we want to be part of the city. so, i couldn't tell them to do anything other than let's continue to do that and kelly has lots of exampels of that. joo how about on that poib quality of life?

whether you are in a city for five or 50 years, as chris knows, they have made the decision you are always assessing whether you are at the right place. it is an ongoing process. it is a very important part of the responsibility that we have as business heads. and we have made that decision many times in pittsburgh. for us, not just the university access for our employees but also for our employee's children is the critical issue. the quality of the education is a great selling point for pittsburgh. it is certainly a strength. i think the other issue for us is the cost of living. we do an assessment of all of the other sitss. we have more than 50 across the

country and half a dozen in other sites across new jersey and raleigh and berkeley and when we look and benchmark those sites and those major areas every year. pittsburgh is the lowest cost that we have across the country. so we we make a combination of the low cost of living which means the lower cost of operation for us. combined with a out standing system and great supply of scientists, that is a great combination and i would be remission if i didn't medication that mention that it is a great place to have families and employees. for those reasons we have stayed 50 years.

i think pittsburgh continues year after year to be our choice. >> i saw joel nodding vigorously. those are important metrics. we have time for one or maybe two more questions. rich, i will ask this of you and then maybe mayor hancock. how do you measure success? we can talk about all of the things we would like to do. we know that we are succeeding. when you set out to try to change things, what are you looking at changing and how do you know when you are being successful? >> for the thing that is we do in government creates jobs and opportunities because one of the things about pittsburgh is that people love it. even many who had to leave for

25 or 30 years and move away. you may have had to leave pittsburgh, but pittsburgh never leaves you and it is a great place. i view it as we are trying to view opportunities for young people that they don't have to move away. and more the last couple of years we have been able to turn a corner. we were losing the population and that has now changed. we have young people moving in and there is no one area that we would say making an attractive place to move. we have a major presence from google in our community. and they say once we get them through the tunnel as we say in pittsburgh, they stay. but we have to get them there. because we have this false perception of pittsburgh living

off the analogy. that is how i would judge it. >> we were sitting here conferring. it is success comes in a lot of different packages. it is measured by the landing of the flight from denver to tokyo. and the jobs and $130 million per year in economic impact. it is judged by the decision by a company like devida or ge solar or moving their headquarters to denver are. those are important because we understand the importance of how serious those decisions are to relocate your employees. it is the expansion of the companies that want you to stay. and now they are expanding to different buildings and towers.

it is when the elements that you work on housing, transportation and education begin to jive and are helping to build for the next generation and along with governor walker said, it is not about the jestnext election. when those things are jiving, you know you are beginning to reach success. it is different and relative and it depends on what you are wa working. i want to bring it back to the fact that we had a state panel with governors right before this one. pittsburgh and denver are two sort of major economic engines in their state. but, you are situated in a state. are there times when you are saying things going to be better when the knuckle heads in the

state house, are cities able to do things on their owner are you bound by what is going on when it comes to taxes and the environment of what is going on? how can city leaders think ababt dealing with their states and working around them with policies that are not conducive to growth. >> we never refer to any one as a knuckle head. there is no question that we are working with our states. every single policy issue is a statewide policy issue for us. so that is where we spend most of our time is making sure we are creating a statewide environment that supports business and allows us to achieve success. what is key in making head way in that effort because i can't imagine that anything is

different is that i think you form those close relationships. focus on the goal of what you are going for. remove the des tractions and get everyone to look at the goal of what you are trying to achieve. and i recommend all heads of chamber serve as heads of staff. you can text them. and see if you can achieve po policy that way. >> his phone number is. >> part of that, there is no substitute for working with state government officials and there is so much that they do that affects the environment of developing the economy that you have to work with them. pittsburgh is doing something that i think is important. we are within 30 minutes of three states. ohio west virginia and the

panhandle of maryland. a lot of the thing that is we do. clusters, workforce don't stop at those artificial boundaries so we have started to cross state lines. we have energy initiative and we have a broad regional initiative called the 32 working together on a series of thing that is brings it together. that is something that we can do at a regional level. we are running out of time and i want to encourage you all to pick up the study that we put out. tom started us off by putting out that despite what is going on, there is a lot to be opt miystic about what is going on. please join me innk