Blog

Riding the Growth Rocket

Jul 27, 2026
We’ve paired this annual Corporate Report 100 edition, ranking and recognizing fast-growth companies based in this region, with the theme of wealth management, banking and financial services for decades, and for very good reason: Companies go through cycles, and nearly… more

What Does Progress Look Like?

Jul 27, 2026
The wave of organized opposition spreading across the Kansas City metro—from Peculiar’s preemptive ban in 2024 to this year’s dust-ups with Independence’s tax-abatement fight, Gardner’s withdrawn proposal, Edgerton’s hold, Jackson County’s moratorium, the gathering pushback in Leavenworth County—has produced some… more

OK, I Was Wrong About the World Cup

Jul 27, 2026
The conversion came quickly. I was driving south on Main Street toward the Country Club Plaza when I heard a ruckus coming from Mill Creek Park, site of the erstwhile J.C. Nichols Fountain. “What are they protesting now?” I asked… more

Kansas City International

Jul 1, 2026
The chants came in Dutch and Spanish, in Arabic and German, in the universal language of grown men weeping when their team’s run ends on foreign soil. For more than a month, Arrowhead—the FIFA-decreed “Kansas City Stadium” for the duration—is… more

The Mirage of the Algorithmic Answer

Jul 1, 2026
There is a quiet seduction taking place in the modern executive suite, one wrapped in the flawless logic of the spreadsheet and the high-tech promise of predictive analytics. Across the Kansas City region, whether it’s in finance, commercial real estate,… more

Americans Will Find Socialized Medicine Hard to Swallow

Jul 1, 2026
Two summers ago, on Election Day in France, I was doing some editing and intermittently checking the (discouraging) French results when I heard French being spoken outside my lakeside cottage in western New York. It seemed oddly coincidental that my… more

Challenging Recovery and Hope for Future Support

Jun 3, 2026
I sit down to write this month’s column after a series of sleepless nights and back-to-back major building fires at our Lake of the Ozarks restaurant, Pebble Bay Club Grill. More about this catastrophic experience in a moment. This column,… more

Should We Start Stacking?

Jun 3, 2026
Kansas City sits astride more than a state line. It straddles a century-old economic and political divide that has shaped nearly every major development decision in the region. The Missouri–Kansas “Border War” over economic incentives and corporate relocations has often… more

Pay for Talent—or Develop It?

Jun 3, 2026
For years, college coaches competed to recruit student-athletes to their sports programs. Today, bizarrely, the real challenge for many coaches is retention. More precisely, “employee retention,” and yes, the “employees” in question are the alleged student athletes. It seems like… more

Refilling the Leadership Pipeline

Apr 29, 2026
For a region that has long prided itself on punching above its weight, Kansas City finds itself in an unusual moment—one defined as much by absence as by opportunity. Over the past several years, we’ve watched a generation of civic… more