[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side By Side."

My guest today has helped bring 67,000 new jobs, 500 new projects, and $14 billion in announced investments to North Carolina.

Join me as I talk with Chris Chung, the CEO of the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

- [Narrator] Funding for "Side By Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by.

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75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Announcer] For 60 years, The Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group.

Great people.

Smart service.

- [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[upbeat music] - Chris, welcome to "Side by Side."

I'm so glad to see you today.

You're a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Ohio State.

You majored in Japanese and economics.

- [Chris] I did.

- But your family originally is from Taiwan, correct?

- That's right.

- Why Japanese?

- Well, I grew up in Central Ohio.

First of all, thank you so much for having me on the show.

I grew up in Central Ohio to immigrants from Taiwan, and I was born in 1976.

So as I was growing up in my formative younger years, Japan was really in economic ascendancy.

You well remember in the 1980s, of course, our automotive industry here in the United States and other industries in the country were worried about Japanese prominence much in the same way that today we see that same concern about China.

I happened to grow up in a suburb of Columbus, Ohio that was home to a lot of Japanese family transplants who worked at the major Honda factory that was just on the outskirts of Columbus.

So, I got to know a lot of these kids personally, but also saw that there was probably good professional reason long-term to study this language.

I developed an interest in the food and the culture, all those things that when you're 11 or 12 years old, they might drive your interest in learning a new language.

And my parents being immigrants from Taiwan, they actually had quite a bit of exposure to Japanese culture because Japan governed Taiwan from about like 1895 to the end of World War II.

So just lots of different reasons, but it ended up being a great decision, personally, because it led me into the career path that I'm in right now.

- You speak Japanese now?

- It's really rusty now.

It's like anything else, yeah, when you don't use foreign language, and that's probably one of my big regrets.

I spent more than 10, 11 years studying this through middle school, high school, college.

Don't really have too much of a chance to use it today.

But it's something that I'm very thankful that I did because it led me to a lot of other things that opened up great opportunities.

- And then in 2015, you became the head guy at the Economic Development Partnership of North Carolina.

A very, very vital and vibrant organization in our state.

You have been a cheerleader and a champion in attracting so much business to our state.

Something like $14 billion in announced new investments in North Carolina.

In the Triad, for example, we have Toyota Battery, we have Boom Supersonic.

In the Triangle, you have Apple, and so on and so forth.

Chris, what is it that attracts people to the Tar Heel State?

- Well, I think for the companies that look here and that locate here, the number one draw by far is the access to human capital.

It's the workforce, right?

If you're a company, whatever industry you are, you need people to be successful.

It doesn't matter if you're in manufacturing or technology or life sciences, you depend on the access to that skilled talent that you need to be the number one company in your particular industry.

And I think when companies look here in North Carolina, they're really floored by the workforce story, both in terms of what we're producing through fine institutions like High Point University and all our private and public schools across the state, as well as our two-year community colleges.

We have a lot of people who are leaving military service from right here in North Carolina re-entering civilian life.

And then add to all of those, people who continue to migrate in from outside North Carolina, coming to us from the Northeast, the Midwest, California, other parts of the South.

We continue to be a magnet for people moving here who bring not only their educational abilities, but their skills, their experiences, their connections, and all of that creates a really attractive talent picture that continues to draw companies to locate here in the Tar Heel State.

- You and your staff have done a fantastic job in attracting something like close to 70,000 new jobs in our state, which, of course, contributes measurably to economic impact and tax base and housing starts and all the rest.

Do we have capacity to keep growing like that, Chris?

- Well, I would rather be answering that question, of course, than other states that may be wondering, "Well, what does it take to emulate the kind of success North Carolina has?"

And I'll be very clear, We are part of a broader team of partners doing this type of work all across the state that involve the public sector, the private sector, the nonprofit sector.

We get to be the tip of the spear in a lot of these conversations with companies.

But by no means does that credit fall solely to our organization.

- [Nido] It's collaborative effort.

- It really is.

- It's like the Piedmont Triad Partnership and- - Absolutely, the Greensboro Chamber, the High Point Economic Development Corporation.

We have so many local, regional, private sector partners that we all call in when we get these opportunities.

So, yes, but in terms of what that requires, yeah, I think it's the workforce story that we are very lucky to get to talk to companies about.

And that continues to be a huge selling point.

- But what do you think is the saturation point?

I mean, we have 55 or so community colleges.

- [Chris] 58.

- 58, we have a 17 public universities.

- [Chris] That's right.

- Part of the University of North Caroline Public University system.

We have 35 or so private colleges.

We are very blessed, in essence, a hundred and some institutions.

They're producing new talent and so on.

- [Chris] That's right.

- People are retiring later in life.

There is mobility coming into the state, right?

People are moving into our state.

But where is that equilibrium?

At some point, are we gonna be just, you know, creating jobs here, taking them from this company, or we really do have a supply of workforce that we can continue to promote?

- Well, that's really gonna be the key to North Carolina's long-term, sustained success in economic development is, A, can we keep up with the challenges of growth?

And, like I said, I think any state would much rather have to deal with the challenges of growth.

- [Nido] Of course.

- Than stagnation or shrinkage even.

And that's really where North Carolina is.

I think that's where we depend on our state policy makers, our local government officials, to make sure that we're investing in things like educational capacity, infrastructure, housing availability.

I mean, these are all things that if not properly managed, we might see growth start to have some really negative consequences wherever in the state that growth is occurring.

But, yes, I believe that North Carolina's gonna continue to have plenty of room to grow as long as we're smart about planning our investments in the future so that that growth never becomes a liability or compromises the quality of life that has drawn people here for decades.

- Exactly, yes.

So infrastructure means what, highways, airports, port?

- Highways are part of it, right?

So one of the things that people notice in a high growth area can be traffic congestion.

That starts to really erode into quality of life.

And so road improvements.

So take, for example, here in the Piedmont Triad region, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, High Point, very well planned, very well built out.

There is tremendous amount of excess highway capacity right now that really sets this region up well for the future.

We want make sure that continues to be the case in places like Charlotte, the Triangle, Asheville, Wilmington, other high growth markets in the state.

School size, right?

If people continue to move in from the outside, if you're all of a sudden relying on a lot of temporary classroom space, which is not ideal, that's also another symptom of excessive growth that's not well managed.

And then, of course, housing availability.

We've really seen in the past few years, across the whole country, as well here in North Carolina, housing has gotten to be really expensive, really hard for people to get into.

And if they're not making a certain amount of money, they really have to look very far away, which means they got to commute a much greater distance to get to the jobs that are being created in the center parts of these growing markets.

And all of these are challenges of growth.

Much rather have them, but that doesn't make them any easier of a challenge to try to address.

- Yeah, they're challenges instead of problems.

- [Chris] That's right, yeah, absolutely.

- So in some cities, for example, because of the housing situation, there has been some private initiatives to create housing that could be, you know, rentals are less expensive, startups and so on.

Like Charlotte, for example, has a program like that, and other places are doing it.

So maybe that's part of the solution.

Sometimes we lose a deal, right?

That's they go down to South Carolina and- - [Chris] Much as I hate to admit it, yes, sometimes that does happen.

- And part of that is often money.

We don't have the kind of, you know, economic incentives that some of these companies are looking for.

Am I right, am I wrong?

- I feel like as a state, we've made a lot more progress.

I think 10 years ago, roughly 10 years ago when I started in this role, I would say incentives were much more of a frequent reason as to why we would lose, especially the really big transformative deals.

As you mentioned earlier in the program, Toyota is one of the biggest success stories from North Carolina Economic Development in the past couple of years.

A deal like what's Toyota's doing here in Greensboro, that would've been one we would be vulnerable to losing based on incentives a decade ago when we didn't quite have the mindset that we had to be very, very competitive, very aggressive for these types of deals.

I would say that that's come a long way because of the governor and the general assembly working closely together to figure out how do we incent these deals responsibly, but in a way that's gonna allow us to emerge tops in the competition.

Today, we actually lose deals much earlier in the process when we do lose, because we lack the kinds of industrial real estate necessary to attract some of these very large advanced manufacturing facilities.

And that may sound very counterintuitive.

If you drive around a big state like North Carolina, you may say, Chris, there seems to plenty of land, but the kind of land, - [Nido] You need water.

- And you need water, sewer, high capacity electric.

You need to be close to the kind of workforce that can support thousands of jobs.

- [Nido] Sometimes rail.

- Sometimes rail.

And those parcels of land are getting increasingly in short supply, partly because we've been successful in filling those types of sites with major users.

So we just gotta make sure that inventory doesn't get so low that we start being unable to compete for a lot of these big projects.

- Give us an idea on numbers.

When we talk about these large companies, they're basically building facilities of what size?

- Oftentimes millions of square feet.

- Millions of square feet?

- Millions of square feet.

I think Toyota and Greensboro, when they're completed with this first phase, it'll be at least 3 or 4 million square feet under the roof.

- It's hard to comprehend what that is.

- It it really is.

It's something like 80 football fields or something like that when people try to break it down.

- And you have to parking for the workers.

- Parking for the workers, yeah.

- Have facilities and loading docks and so on.

- Yeah, we're just talking about the amount of square footage that's under a roof, right, multiple millions of square feet.

- It's remarkable.

Which means that they're paying utilities for the community in which they reside and creating jobs and making contributions to nonprofits in that area and providing volunteer work quite often that does amazing things.

So I'm, of course, all for all economic development because I see what it does in the lives of people, in the lives of families, and in the educational system that provides all kinds of facilities and activities and training for such elements.

What is your biggest challenge?

What is it you worry about?

- I would say we want to make sure that when companies continue to look in North Carolina, when they give us that vote of confidence that we could be their future home, we want to make sure that we can answer their concerns about long-term workforce availability.

Again, it all goes back to talent.

Talent is the big reason that we wear the two years in a row now the crown for being the top state for business according to CNBC.

We wanna make sure that from a workforce and talent standpoint, we continue to be the superlative choice across all 50 states.

And that isn't something that will just happen if we want it to happen.

It is something that's gonna take very deliberate investments in education, workforce development in our two- and four-year institutions, in helping military veterans transition successfully to the private sector, in re-skilling incumbent workers.

It's any and all of these strategies that are going to allow us to remain an attractive place for talent to move to, but for talent to stay to.

Because if we can do those things, then companies will follow because they will pursue where that workforce looks like.

And like I said, that is my concern, not because I don't think it'll be happening, it's my concern because it's going to take very deliberate intentional policy and strategy for us as a state to stay top of the country, top of the game in this regard.

If we do that, I think the future is in very, very good hands.

- Yeah, and what are some of the initiatives in that regard now?

I mean, give us sort of a pedestrian view of, what does it really mean to prepare workforce?

How long does it take to have that workforce prepared?

And what is it that these companies are looking for?

They're looking for technical know-how?

Are they looking for managerial law?

I would think that for every manager they're looking for 30, 40 technical people.

- I would say most of the focus for these companies will be, while managerial talent and technical talent will certainly be important- - [Nido] Engineering.

- Yes, it's more of, if we take frontline, or if we take advanced manufacturing, for example.

It's more of the frontline operators and manufacturing employees.

- And so much of that is robotics now.

- There is some amount of automations, which means that the people that do remain in those facilities are going to be at a higher skill level than maybe what a generation and certainly two generations ago would've been expected from that workforce.

So a lot of the role there in the near term is going to fall to institutions like our two-year community colleges, which can do a lot to customize training specifically for industries that are expanding and locating here.

Two-year community colleges can also move relatively quickly in terms of adapting and creating new curriculum that meets the needs of a specific employer or set of employers who have clustered around a region.

Longer term, K-12 absolutely is going to play a role.

One of the things I'm most heartened by.

You asked that question a second ago.

Our K-12 system is now experimenting with a concept called portrait of a graduate.

And this is really designed to imbue K-12 students in our public education system with the soft skills that you teach here, the life skills.

- I call them life skills.

- Yes, life skills, whatever you call them.

And I think they use the term durable skills, accountability, initiative, communication, collaboration.

- [Nido] Mindset.

- Yes, lifelong learning.

- How to think.

- Yeah, that's our critical thinking is one of those two.

And so these are things that should be taught alongside with, as well as measured the same way that we do reading, writing, math, and some of the traditional hard skills that we teach and expect to see on a report card in K-12.

And that's now starting to get incorporated into K-12 education in North Carolina.

That's very reassuring.

- So, Chris, you know, the difficulty with that, everybody wants to be relevant.

Everyone's talking about relevance, but you can't have relevance until you have a sense of awareness, because a sense of awareness will lead to good judgment.

Judgment leads to good relevance.

So we do it backwards sometimes.

It all begins with the way we think and we process information, not just gathering information.

And, to me, that's the difference between training and education, between, you know, information and persuasion, all these elements.

And I think part of the reason that we have difficulty with that in higher education institutions, and K to 12 perhaps, is that the people who are the conduits are not fully versed themselves in these disciplines.

And it is hard, for example, to teach something you don't fully understand.

It's hard to understand it unless you've been in the trenches, unless you've done it.

So I think it takes a little longer than we think.

Anybody can say we're gonna teach life skills.

But I've watched a lot of people try to do it on a college level.

But if it's taught by people who have not experienced life skills, it just doesn't work quite as well.

So it's more challenging than I think meets the eye.

I walked into furniture plant the other day.

I was fascinated.

I remember furniture when you had people sitting there with staples and so on.

This was all robotics.

And there would be one person for every 10, 20 machines there.

So where are the people?

You used to go in and see a thousand people.

So I suggest to you that maybe part of that is that we have to prepare people not only for the jobs these industries want today, but what's happening five years from now.

- Of course.

- In 10 years from now, or maybe next year given artificial intelligence and all the rest.

You certainly see that as a technology, as a big part of workforce preparedness.

- I do.

Technology's going to continue to evolve, right?

No one is going to be able to predict where technology takes us in the next 5, 10 years.

Of course, there are futurists and people who think they know, but the reality is that's a big question mark.

So I think that further underscores the importance of these life skills.

Things like critical thinking, lifelong learning.

These are skills that will serve anybody well, regardless of where technology takes our industries.

And I think that's why it speaks to the importance of why that's part of the curriculum here at High Point University.

It's why I think they're trying to do this at a K-12 level.

We don't know what industry's gonna look like in 20 years.

And for any of us to guess that, there's probably gonna be more of us who are wrong than right.

But let's imbue our students and our graduates with the skills that will label them to be prosperous and successful, whatever the economy looks like in a decade from now.

- And that's the development of the person.

- [Chris] That's right, yeah.

- And part of it's to have an entrepreneurial mindset.

You have an entrepreneurial mindset.

You may be in economics and running an economic partnership, but you have an entrepreneurial mindset.

An entrepreneurial mindset is about how you think, what you do, how you make things better, and so on.

It doesn't mean you just run a business.

Chris, what is it that you would like for our citizens of North Carolina to know about what we've achieved, and what we are looking hence forth yet to achieve?

- Well, I would say I'm very fortunate to be in this line of work, and this job is gotta be one of the best in the state.

I think your job's pretty good, but I put my mine up there.

- They're hard jobs though.

- [Chris] Exactly.

- They're demanding jobs.

- You know, we work with so many great partners that makes it pretty easy.

And we have a great product to market.

At the end of the day, North Carolina is a wonderful product, and we just have to help people understand that.

So I would say for the average person watching this program, I would remind them that they're ambassadors for North Carolina.

If they're watching this here in North Carolina, and maybe they're outside North Carolina- - They wanna come here.

- They're ambassadors as well.

- They wanna come here.

- And I think that's something I also try to remind community citizens about, is that whether you're traveling on a flight somewhere across the country or attending a conference around the world or posting on social media, you get that opportunity to be an ambassador for what it means to live, to work, to do business, to start a business- - [Nido] To promote, to be hospitable.

- To be part of North Carolina.

Yeah, and I think that's one great way.

That's one very easy thing that each of us can do to make sure that the world continues to know how great a place North Carolina is.

And if we do that well, our job at the EDPNC is gonna be pretty easy.

- And you want the legislators to continue to be tax friendly to companies?

- Yes, all that's a given, right?

Again, I talked about those investments in education and infrastructure.

We've gotta make sure the business climate, the regulatory climate, the tax system, our incentives, all of these things they have to be invested in.

We want to make sure that we don't show up on any lists where we are 50th or 49th.

That's not a good place for states to live.

Fortunately, we're always top 10, if not top 5.

We're number one in CNBC's best states for business rankings.

But in terms of what the typical person who may not know much about economic development can do, the one easy thing that they can do to help all of us in this field is just continue to be a great ambassador and a spokesperson for what it means to be in North Carolina.

- Who would you say are our biggest competitors in terms of states?

You know, when I think of Florida, Florida has been a refuge for so many people.

But what Florida doesn't have the workforce that we would have here for Toyota Battery and so on.

Is it South Carolina, is it Georgia, is it Alabama, who?

- It really depends on the kind of company or industry that we're talking to.

So we do, of course, industry attraction, but we also do tourism promotion.

We try to recruit film and TV activity here as well.

So for film and TV, Georgia's a very formidable competitor.

If we're talking about attracting automotive investment, a lot of the southeastern states like South Carolina, Georgia, Texas to an extent, Ohio and the Midwest.

These are all very formidable competitors.

We're talking about tourism, we compete a lot with the Tennessees of the world.

I mean, it just really depends on the context in which we are doing our economic development work.

But if you're talking about attracting businesses, jobs and investment in sectors like advanced manufacturing, it's almost always gonna be one of the southeastern states that butts up right against us.

And they're all very formidable competitors.

They'd love to have the success that we have.

We definitely envy some of the wins that they have.

It's a constant reminder this is a very competitive industry, just like higher education.

And we always have to be seeking those ways we can differentiate North Carolina and win that business from our customer.

- Yes, and you're doing a great job collaboratively with so many to do exactly that.

Give us an idea about the partnership.

You have a staff of 40 people.

- Actually about 70 people.

- [Nido] 70 people.

- Yeah.

- People tell us what they do.

- It's broken across a few different sectors.

We've spent most of this program talking about our work recruiting companies here.

But we also help existing companies in North Carolina, both to support their future growth, but also to help them with special functions like exporting.

We live in this big global economy, right?

And so there are tremendous market opportunities for our North Carolina manufacturers to sell their products outside the US, right?

Something like 95% of the world's population lives outside America.

So how do we help companies tap into those markets?

Because if they can, if they sell more around the world, they're probably gonna have to expand what they have here in North Carolina.

We do some small business startup counseling.

And then as I mentioned, tourism promotion also is our responsibility.

Get people to come here and spend not only their time, but also spend their money here on our travel and tourism economy.

- So you hire what, economists, salespeople?

- Actually, not a lot of economists, because we aren't doing a whole lot of policy per se.

So I would say the best analog for our work is sales and marketing.

Our product is North Carolina.

So whether we're selling North Carolina as a travel destination or as a place for a company to expand, or if we're even selling North Carolina exports, it really is selling and marketing this intangible product called North Carolina.

- Yeah, it's all about relational capital, isn't it?

- That's really important.

We have our sales relationships as well.

- Yeah, getting along with people.

So, Chris, what is it that excites you every morning when you get up in the morning and go to work?

I know you love your work.

I know you celebrated the achievements.

But driving to work, what are you thinking about?

I'm really excited to continue this because, what?

- Well, unlike when I first moved here nine years ago, I have two kids now who are born in North Carolina, two little girls who are three and one.

And so I think that probably subconsciously gives the work a new meaning.

You often hear people in economic development talk about the fact that if they're successful doing their work, maybe that means their kids won't have to move far away for a job.

And while I don't worry about North Carolina being a great economy by the time my kids are working age, if I can do my part in this role in the brief time that I'm in it, maybe that just increases those chances- - [Nido] That's beautiful.

- That our girls will stay close by and we'll continue to be closer.

- That's beautiful.

You're tying the personal and the professional in one.

- I hope so.

They're three and one, so they're not thinking about economies or jobs or anything like that.

I'm thinking about that as probably overly sentimental dad.

- A program associated with the US sector of commerce picked you as one of the 34 international business and economic leaders.

And I want to congratulate you for that.

Chris, I've known you for a long time.

I've admired your work.

I've appreciated your commitment to the state and commitment to the businesses both existing now and potential ones coming into the state, and ultimately creating jobs and security for all of us who call North Carolina home.

So I thank you for all of that.

And every time I see you, I learn something new from you.

You're a very eloquent and articulate communicator, And you talk about ambassadors of North Carolina, you're among the best of them.

- That's very kind, I appreciate it.

- And thank you for being with me today- - Thank you so much, Doctor.

- On "Side By Side."

- Pleasure to be with you, appreciate your time.

[upbeat music] [upbeat music continues] [upbeat music continues] - [Narrator] Funding for "Side By Side with Nido Qubein" is made possible by.

- [Announcer] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand.

But none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Announcer] For 60 years, The Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group.

Great people.

Smart service.

- [Announcer] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally.

Thanks to our teammates.

We're Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.