New Orleans native Kenneth Purcell and his wife have called 911 about 20 times in the past year to report break-ins and other crimes near their home and his business, located just three blocks apart in the city's Warehouse District. But that hasn't driven him from the inner city. His 25-employee software firm, iSeatz, is thriving, with sales last year of $38 million, up from $28 million in 2008. That success has been helped by what Purcell calls the "social capital" gained by creating local jobs when he moved back from Manhattan two years after Katrina. "In the midst of hearing about all these big businesses that were abandoning the state in which they were founded, I said, to hell with that," the 35-year-old founder and chief executive says. "I wanted to go home and do the opposite of everyone else."
His company landed second place in this year's Inner
City 100 ranking of the fastest-growing inner-city businesses in
the U.S. The list—based on five-year compound annual growth rate—is a
Who's Who of high-potential private ventures in downtrodden urban
areas.(Bloomberg Businessweek is the media partner.) Think
multimillion-dollar manufacturers and construction companies (these
industries make up 31 percent of the 2010 ranking), not mom-and-pop
bodegas.The annual roundup is compiled by the Boston-based
not-for-profit Initiative
for a Competitive Inner City, founded in 1994 by Harvard Business
School competitiveness guru Michael Porter. The ICIC's goal is to show
that not only can companies thrive in the inner city, but there are also
competitive advantages to locating there. Over the past 12 years,
winners have created 71,000 new jobs and employed 40,000 inner-city
residents.
To read the full, original article click on this link: Doing Business in the Inner City - BusinessWeek
Author: Nick Leiber
