ADAM ROSENLUND
HIGH-TECH L
O
I
W
-
t’s no accident that publications such as Forbes, Money and The New York Times continue to look at the Treasure Valley when postulating where tech companies advance and thrive. In May of this year, NYT talked to Peter Gombert, chief executive of Balihoo, a web-based Boise company that provides technology and services to national companies looking to market themselves locally. Forbes.com recently listed Boise as one example of
WWW.BOISEWEEKLY.COM
K
E
Y
Why Boise still tops the list of places innovators do—and should—live
out-of-the-way places where the tech sector continues to grow in spite of staggering job losses. A report from the Metropolitan Policy Program at Brookings Institute, written by Heike Mayer, associate professor of urban affairs and planning at Virginia Tech, showed Boise, Portland, Ore., and Kansas City as emerging high-tech metropolitan areas. The Treasure Valley is not a new player in the technology game. In the 1970s, as new technologies were
by Amy Atkins
developing, corporations such as Hewlett-Packard and Micron started in the Treasure Valley, their buildings full of tech-savvy employees. And like these companies, which grew from the seed of an idea, the entrepreneurial spirit took hold of some of these people, and they began to branch out, leaving the corporate environment behind and striking out on their own. They formed companies with innovative services and products in hardware, software, clean technology, Web services, financial services,
BOISEweekly
| SEPTEMBER 2–8, 2009 | 11