New Hampshire – the best place for business, except...

If you are unfamiliar with the NH factbook, or Prosper NH, the economic development arm of Public Service of New Hampshire, I encourage you to visit those links and check them out.

The factbook and the Prosper NH site are full of tidbits on why New Hampshire has many advantages that make it a great place to live, work and build a business.  They offer that New Hampshire has:

• Best pro-business climate in New England 
• Best state for business in New England  
• No income tax
• No sales tax
• Most livable state in the U.S.
• Lowest crime rate in New England 
• Highest standard of living in New England 
• Best child and family well being in the U.S.

With all these advantages, however, there’s still an enormous gorilla in the room:  that for all of New Hampshire’s advantages in education and per capita income, it’s still well behind its neighbor, Massachusetts, in per capita personal income according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  While the impact of Boston and the major financial companies located there certainly skews things a bit, there is still a significant number of very large, recognizable companies located well North of the city, and just a few miles from the New Hampshire border.  Look just a few miles south down Route 3 in Burlington and you’ll find the fabled 128 technology corridor, with Oracle, SAP, Nuance, Aspen Technology, iRobot, Dassault Systems, Merck and Shire all finding a home.  Down 93 in Andover you can find Wyeth, Nike, and Phillips.  In Andover, Billerica, Tyngsboro and Woburn there are major Raytheon facilities, as well as Teradyne in Wilmington and Goodrich in Westford, as well as Kronos in Chelmsford and a whole host of who’s who in defense contracting in Bedford.  And all this is before you even get to the Lexington to Waltham stretch of 128, where the roster of companies in the area looks like a Fortune 500 who’s who. 

With New Hampshire having so many advantages, why is it that so many major employers are still shunning the state?  Perhaps it is a matter of perception - New Hampshire simply isn’t sexy enough to provide the same image that a Route 128 location does when seen on corporate literature.  Given the benefits described by the people at Prosper NH, however, it would seem that a few miles’ drive might be worth the bottom-line impact the next time expansion or relocation are in order.

Nonetheless, for now, there are several start-ups that have decided to stay North of the border and lay their foundations in New Hampshire.  Companies like JetBoil and Dyn call Manchester home, and Ultrasource is located in Hollis, to name just a few of the emerging NH-based companies that might change the playing field at some point in the future.  Unfortunately, until perceptions changes, it seems that we’re likely to stay in the shadow of Massachusetts for quite a while.