Flywheels: How Cities Are Creating Their Own Futures

Once a blue-collar outpost, Seattle, home to Microsoft, Amazon, and hundreds of startups, transformed into one of the world's major innovation hubs in less than twenty years. As other cities try to solve the riddle of creating vibrant economies, many have looked to Seattle as a model for tech-driven urban renaissance. However, that success comes with skyrocketing housing costs, increasing homelessness, public safety concerns, persistent racial inequality, and a widening gap between the haves and have-nots. Against that backdrop, big tech has become a popular target.

Tom Alberg, a venture capitalist who was one of the first investors in Amazon, draws on his experience in Seattle's tech boom to offer a vision for how cities and businesses can build a brighter future together. He explores ways that cities can soar to prosperity by creating the conditions that encourage innovation. Like flywheels, livable cities generate momentum by drawing creative citizens who launch businesses. Success attracts more talent, energizing local economies and accelerating further innovation. Alberg emphasizes the importance of city governments and tech companies partnering to address civic challenges. He reflects on why the benefits of the tech boom have not been distributed equally and what business and government leaders must do differently to ensure inclusive growth. The book also examines success stories from smaller cities and their lessons for other up-and-coming tech hubs. Demonstrating the need for innovative thinking that encourages livability alongside economic growth, Flywheels is timely reading for everyone from mayors to business leaders to engaged citizens.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by John Stanton
Part I. Prelude to Jeff Bezos’s Day 1
1. Opportunities and Challenges of Cities
2. Foundations of the Economic Flywheel
3. Seattle’s Flywheels Begin Spinning
4. Microsoft and Amazon Innovate to Success
Part II
5. On the Precipice of the Future
6. Investing in the Future: Talent and Capital
7. Models for Success: Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Kansas City
Part III
8. Livable Cities
9. Public Safety and Privacy
10. Homelessness and PreK–12 Education
11. Transportation and Environment
Part IV
12. Government and Business: Conflicts and Cooperation
13. The Future of Cities
Acknowledgments
Note on Sources
Notes
Index

About the Author :
Tom Alberg is cofounder of the venture capital firm Madrona Venture Group. He previously was senior vice president of McCaw Cellular and president of LIN Broadcasting. Alberg was an early investor in Amazon and one of its board members from 1996 to 2019. He has also served on the boards of numerous other companies and was a member of the National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

Review :
Tom saw something in Amazon before most people did. . . . That leap of faith led to a long-term partnership as Tom continued to collaborate with me over more than two decades on Amazon’s board. Empowering everyone and every organization on the planet to achieve more begins locally. In Flywheels, Tom Alberg delves into how the Seattle area and other communities are building tech platforms that drive innovation while also doing good, providing a thoughtful approach to building livable communities that we can all learn from. Throughout his distinguished career, Tom Alberg has been at the center of companies that have come to define Seattle, including Boeing, McCaw, and Amazon. In Flywheels, Alberg provides a view into the boardroom decisions that shaped these companies combined with a citizen's view of both the resulting prosperity and problems. Alberg provides insightful analysis of the key inputs to the flywheel for creating a culture of entrepreneurship and innovation in other cities as well as solutions to the resulting traffic and housing crisis in Seattle. A must-read for any business and civic-minded leader. If you really want to understand how to build a tech hub, read this book. Tom Alberg, a leading venture capitalist, tells the inside story of how and why Seattle's culture of openness and risk propelled it to the leading ranks of global innovation centers, home to companies like Amazon, Microsoft, and more. But Alberg goes beyond tech boosterism to create a guidebook and game plan for addressing today's new urban crisis of housing unaffordability, inequality, and homelessness. Drawing on examples like Tulsa's pioneering efforts to harness remote workers, new models of public-private partnership are required to truly keep the urban flywheel turning for post-pandemic prosperity. A fascinating first-person account of the companies, people, and regional assets that made Seattle into a global tech powerhouse, written by someone who knows its innovation ecosystem better than any other. Alberg shows not only how it was done but also how high-tech capitals—and cities everywhere—can do it even better through strong leadership, long-term thinking, and a commitment to livability for all. Essential reading for navigating times of extraordinary change and tech-driven disruption. In Flywheels, the venture capitalist Tom Alberg makes a powerful case for business and government to work together to solve our most pressing urban problems—problems that can’t be solved by either alone. I have watched Tom put this belief into practice, moving leaders from corporate and civic life toward our common goals through Challenge Seattle, a group of twenty-one CEOs that I lead. Tom was one of the first members. At our roundtable discussions, he has pressed some of our region’s most successful business leaders to put their appetite for innovation toward finding solutions to homelessness, transportation, and a host of other urban challenges. This book pushes that work forward in ways that will resonate in cities across the country. Seattle’s emergence as a global hub of creativity and innovation is a history that had not been written—until now. Uniquely positioned to write it, Tom Alberg simultaneously offers a guide for others who would create similar flywheels of prosperity in their own regions. His curiosity, appreciation for research institutions, and humanity shine through on every page. Exceptionally well written, organized and presented.