Steve Gallison is a great thinker. I have worked with him on various projects, spoke for his group of candidates in Maryland, and roomed with him at a conference.  He’s a class act.

I asked on my JibberJobber blog what people are reading, having been inspired by Paul Allen’s memoir, and he responded with an awesome, awesome, awesome comment, including this:

How does a leader create more jobs than the competition?

By creating more customers.

Almost no one knows this.

Keep in mind that no business is trying to create jobs.

They are all working all day and every weekend to create new customers. New customers are the real goal of a nation.

Because jobs always follow customers.

Too few leaders have this figured out and it is at the very core of our failure to fix this seemingly colossal American problem.

To create authentic, organic, real job growth — not pretend jobs made by government — city and country leaders need to focus on customers.

I’ve long lamented the fake jobs… and LOVE the idea of creating customers.  Isn’t that right?  A company with customers hires more people.  More people employed means those people can be customers of other stuff.

A government-funded company, like Solyndra, without customers, does not create jobs.  It only wastes hundreds of millions of dollars, dashes hopes, causes a loss of faith in the government, and reaffirms the proper role of government.