By Dean Whittaker As we celebrate Thanksgiving, I am reminded of the things for which I am grateful. This month I received an email from an old friend who attached a letter that I had written him in 1977 congratulating him on his new position as president/CEO...
By Dean WhittakerOn October 14-17, I attended the annual meeting of The International Economic Development Council in Indianapolis, Indiana. The scale and scope of the four-day event surprised this old hand: With 80 concurrent sessions and hundreds of speakers, we,...
By Dean Whittaker This month I had the privilege of attending the Industrial Asset Managers Council’s conference held in Milwaukee Wisconsin. To make the trip more interesting, I took the 12,000 horsepower 35 knot high speed catamaran Lake Express Ferry ....
By Dean Whittaker Our team at Whittaker Associates was joined this summer by two Michigan State University interns, Joe Sigler and Yang Fu. Joe is a junior studying statistics and Yang is a graduate student in data analytics, who will graduate in December. One of the...
By Dean Whittaker The play the Music Man that I saw at the Goodman Theater recently reminded me of economic development. The play was written in 1957 and is about the misadventures of a traveling salesman posing as Professor Harold Hill, a music instructor, who...
