Critical Thinking Activity: Amazon's HQ2 Search

Amazon’s HQ2 Search
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Amazon’s HQ2 Search
1 Amazon Search for Second Location for Another World headquarters
Amazon’s HQ2 is one of the planned corporate head offices in Crystal City, Arlington, Virginia, and New York City. It was one of the expansions for the existing headquarters in Seattle, Washington. The site selection for Amazon’s HQ2 is one of the points along a timeline charting in its evolution as one of the most transformative organizations on a global perspective. The legacy for the location was an ideal watershed moment on the strategies that organizations utilize in making relevant site decisions. The selection team identified Long Island City neighborhood in the city of New York and Washington neighborhood in the suburbs of Washington. Considerably, the two locations emerged as the favorite cities during the search.
Amazon was looking for specific qualifications for the cities that it would establish its headquarters. According to Tritt and Teschner (2019), one of such qualities is that 5,000 people would work in the new command center to boost the economy. The fact that Amazon pays well made the opportunity more attractive to employees from different parts of both New York and Washington. However, the identified cities had to have the capability of attracting technical talent and have a proximity to an airport. Furthermore, the towns had to be in either an urban or suburban area that has more than one million people. The CEO announced that he would prefer a community that offers a business-friendly environment.
The New York and Arlington, Virginia, would get 50,000 employees and half of the promised investment. Amazon’s CEO, Jeff Bezos, publicized that the two locations would facilitate world-class talent that would assist invention in the future operations of the corporate. Besides, the CEO recognized that the selection team did a great job in selecting the sites that will enable expansion of the company. Rubin (2018) posits that the city of New York offered Amazon Company a total of $1.525 in the form of direct tax incentives based on the 25,000 job opportunities it created in the area. Besides, Virginia promised a total of $573 in exchange for operating in that area. Furthermore, the CEO announced that Nashville, Tennessee would be the center of excellence for the company’s business operations, thus, creating 5,000 more jobs.
2 The Search Differed from other Types of Headquarter Searches
The search for Amazon HQ2 was unique in comparison with different types of searches. For instance, internal business strategy factors, such as markets and technologies influenced the decision by Amazon in developing New York and Washington cities. One of the primary determinants for the choice of cities was their specialization and whether or not it mat...