Bob Glover's profile

ROBERT E. (BOB) GLOVER

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This profile covers 30 years of experience in the field of enterprise and economic development. Site selection is a process of enterprise development. The experience continues into the 21st century with a focus on the Web.

	Organized consulting firm in 1990, incorporated as Economic Development Services, Inc. a year later. EDS was reorganized in the mid-90s with dedication to providing resources online for global enterprise and economic development, for example listing places around the world wanting economic development with links to location data suppliers. EDS online is best know as The Network.
	Mid-1980s1990: Worked for the planned community development subsidiary of Mobil Corporation and a US construction subsidiary of Obayashi Corporation. Responsibilities were prospect development, site selection services, and commercial development/industrial development consulting.
	Mid-1980s: Served for two years as Senior Vice President of the Georgia Business Council in charge of a program that identified and hosted arranged visits by corporate executive prospects for the state's economic development efforts. The program was called the Georgia Red Carpet Tour. Continued to serve as a tour host and/or prospect development advisor until 1998.
	Mid-1970searly 1980s: Headed the Economic Development Division of the South Carolina State Development Board as Associate Director. A department of commerce later replaced the SCSDB. While in that position he led the efforts to computerize the management of projects and prospect development for the state. The experience not only produced successful results from the start but set Glover on a course that made him ready for the advent of the Internet.* Also, during this time, Glover was awarded the designation of Master Professional by the International Development Research Council. He held the certification longer than anyone actively involved with the organization.
	Early to mid-1970s: Was, first, Deputy Staff Director of the Governor's Industrial Development Division (Tennessee). Glover was handed the responsibility for the logistics of organizing the first version of the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development in 1973. Glover started his career in the field of enterprise and economic development in Augusta, Georgia working for the local chamber of commerce.

* My son Bobby was at the age to jump right in to the development of computers when we lived in South Carolina. The first computer we owned was the Apple IIc. I was able within a couple of years to duplicate the management program that I had developed (not as a technical person) on a main-frame for the South Carolina State Development Board after learning about the personal use of the computer right along with Bobby. That was the beginning of what is now the Global Registry of Contacts which serves the search promise of The Network. Bobby was in the right place at the right time, with the education and experience, to be the technical person who first build the websites for The Network and got things started on the Web, that was during 1995-96.

Bob Glover
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My career as a manager of development programs has always been about location work. I've worked directly with facilities location projects for corporations such as Amoco Chemicals, Campbell Soup, Cooper Industries, Disney, Ernst Winter, Hughes Aircraft, Holiday Inns, IBM, Lucas, Mitsubishi, Motorola, Milacron/Cincinnati Milacron, Procter & Gamble, Reliance Electric and hundreds of others. I've been involved in entrepreneurial start-ups with small enterprises, such as Pinnacle Partners and Kayladesoaps. My single largest site selection project involvement was with Alumax for a $500 million aluminum reduction plant. Cumulatively, however, the announced investment value by companies such as Michelin, have amounted to more.

... joined the marketing group of Mobil Land Development Corporation which had properties such as Hong Kong, Reston, VA and Windward in Alpharetta, GA.

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Forerunners of the (Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development), as it is now structured, date to 1945 with formation
of an Industrial Development Division of the Tennessee State Planning Commission. This division, in 1953, was made an independent agency known as the Tennessee Industrial and Agricultural Development Commission. The work of that commission was combined six years later to form a new Department of Conservation and Commerce. In 1963, the General Assembly placed state-level industrial development under a new staff division for Industrial Development in the Governor’s Office. The division’s work was incorporated by the General Assembly in 1972 into what is now the Department of ECD.

source of the quote: http://state.tn.us/sos/bluebook/05-06/13-ecd.pdf

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I began annual attendance at the Industrial Development Institute at the University of Oklahoma while in Tennessee. I graduated from IDI in 1975 while in South Carolina. I took a basic industrial development course at Georgia Tech beforehand.

The Industrial Development Institute (I.D.I.) at the University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK, was where, in August1962, the process of organizing a body of knowledge with a plan as well as the credentialing of economic development practitioners began. The IDI startup came after a committee of the Southern Industrial Development Council. now SEDC, selected one of three proposals from educational institutions in 1961. The Institute is now know as OU/EDI.

Curricula were offered in concurrent week-long sessions at the outset which, after attending for three years and the writing of a thesis, prepared the student to use a basic foundation to gain credentials through experience. Along with what the University of Oklahoma offered was an admissions requirement that the student complete a week-long basic course that introduced industrial development to the novice or volunteer community economic development representative.

After industrial development came economic development and names were changed to reflect a changing practice. Changes affected the way the body of knowledge for economic development was organized and presented.

The American Industrial Development Council, later AEDC, became involved in the Institute in October 1963 as well as in various basic courses, such as the one offered by Georgia Tech Enterprise and Innovation Institute today. Basic courses, as week-long programs that introduced economic development, became prerequisites for moving on to advanced studies that supported credentialization.

Actually, the first significant change came in the mid-1970s when it was decided that AEDC would certify practitioners. Professional recognition was moved one step beyond graduation from the institute to a Certified Industrial Developer designation bestowed by AEDC after testing. The curriculum became oriented on preparing the student for CID, later CED, and now CEcD testingthe website of the International Economic Development Council has more about CEcD. At the time recognition by testing was introduced, those who had graduated from IDI during the 1960s and up until the mid-70s were grandfathered in a Certified Industrial Developers.

Real estate and finance play such significant roles in economic development that many who attend the institutes and basic training courses opted to obtain professional credentials, such as CCIM. Organizations, such as CoreNet Global, which bring the economic development practitioner together with the real estate professional has a focus on education and certification. During the last 20 years of its existence, the Internal Development Research Council awarded professional recognition to a limited number of its experienced members who demonstrated success in working between site selection and economic development.

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