Guest MINDSETTER™ William Aitken - Economic CPR for Rhode Island
Monday, July 21, 2014
As a young, native-Rhode Islander and recent college graduate with abusiness degree from the University of Rhode Island, I frequently think about the economic culture in RI and its relationship to the young, working population.
Maybe I have a slanted, biased point of view, but I'm noticing some trends, and for the most part....I like what I see. Upon graduating from URI, I had a job with a large insurance company founded in RI, but with offices around the country. I then had the pleasure of going to work for said company in their Portland, Oregon office.
Some readers may know, but the "hipster" movement started in Portland. The granola-eating, grass-fed-beef, thrift-store clothes-wearing, shop local, eat local, nonconforming-with-societal-rules movement started in Portland. I'm not a hipster by any means, but I liked Portland for the few months I was there.
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I'm back in RI now, living and working for a reputable moving company.....and I am far happier than I was with a better paying job with upward mobility and solid earnings potential. Why? Because I go to work every day, sweat and know where every dollar I earn comes from. My co-workers are hard-working individuals like myself, my company looks out for its employees and works hard to maintain an excellent reputation.
As a mover, I have the opportunity to meet many young Rhode Islanders and Providencians and I can see that in many ways, we're not unlike those hipsters in Portland. Many of us, myself included, have little interest in working for a massive corporation, but are content with making what we need to live comfortably, while working for an organization, whose goals and values we can share. We'd also like to know where the food/products we purchase and consume come from and would prefer to buy local.
Let's be realistic. Massive corporations aren't going anywhere but maybe they can start acting like smaller businesses. For a minute here, I'm going to draw from my business degree. There's something out there called Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR). CSR can be defined as the responsibility or accountability that a corporation has to its stakeholders.
Narragansett Brewing and Dels - lessons to be learned
So, If you're a Rhode Island based business, you should keep Rhode Islanders best interests in mind. Let's take Narragansett Brewing Company for example. Yes, as a recent college graduate, I'm using a brewery as an example. Narragansett Brewing Company, the manufacturer of the Narragansett Del's Shandy among other beers that many have been enjoying this summer does a significant amount of their business in Rhode Island, with their headquarters in Providence. So, they have a Corporate Social Responsibility
to keep Rhode Islanders in mind when doing business. To their credit, they do some brewing in Providence, but not to their credit, they do most of their brewing in New York (Wikipedia). I don't know about you, but I've seen an old, empty mill building or two in Providence that's just asking to be retrofitted into an iconic brewery in Providence. If that were to happen, I imagine they'd have a ready and willing workforce of 20-something year olds lined up outside, ready to work before they opened the doors.
Maybe they have plans to expand in RI already. I hope so. So "Hi Neighbor," surprise us and create a few hundred more jobs for Rhode
Islanders and let's see a jump on that flat line that is Rhode Island's economic heart beat. Rhode Island has quite the manufacturing history. Why not rekindle that old flame. More businesses will surely follow.
This is merely an example, and it's expensive for a company to do something like that, but to all those Rhode Island business owners and executives, and out-of-state businesses who do business in RI, please exercise your Corporate Social Responsibility to Rhode Islanders. Invest in, and employ some of the people who are loyal to you. Let's think small, make our economy a local one and turn Rhode Island into a tiny, efficient, economic powerhouse.
Related Slideshow: RI Business Rankings in US
See how Rhode Island stacked up.
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