clusters

The Council on Competitiveness and the National Governors Association report indicates that creating and strengthening regional competitiveness and innovation is the key to the nation’s ability to succeed in the global marketplace and raise the standard of living for all Americans. The report is the result of a two-year study sponsored by the Council on Competitiveness that outlines an agenda for both the public and private sectors to strengthen regional economies and build clusters.

The study investigates how local networks of firms and supporting infrastructure of institutions, businesses and people in communities across Canada interact to spark economic growth. The dynamics of 20 different clusters across five regions and in both rural and urban economies are examined through the project.

The state’s competitiveness strategy, based on industry clusters, is an encompassing initiative that not only encourages the growth of individual clusters, but also addresses a number of cross-cutting issues that affect economic development. This report analyzes its progress through February 2001.

As a follow up to the 1998 publication, this report contains an analysis on how the region can use employment clusters to study the fundamental structure of the local economy and to determine what direction the San Diego region will take during the first decade of the 21st century.

The Milken Institute blueprint is a 40-page policy brief on one of the hottest trends for tech-based economic development. The report outlines and describes ten specific strategies for developing a high-tech cluster.

The Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation (KTEC) assessment determines that KTEC should focus its commercialization efforts on those specific technology areas where opportunity is high and where the elements are in place to deliver those benefits to the state’s economy. The reports discussion of the strategic technology cluster assessment precedes a strategic plan that outlines several recommendations within four selected technology areas: information technology, aviation, human biosciences, and agricultural biotechnology.

A follow-up to the 1999 economic and geographic overview of the key Internet cluster regions, the report outlines several internal challenges. Approximately 100 Internet executives and experts were interviewed for the 2000 analysis to discuss recent trends in globalization and how they are impacting the location choices of Internet companies.

The authors explains that although the new media cluster in Toronto is still largely composed of small firms, the industry is becoming increasingly differentiated, as a select number of local firms have rapidly increased in size, and as foreign firms establish branches in Toronto. The establishment of foreign new media companies will increase the competition for customers and skilled labor, the author contends.

The paper unveils some of the characteristics of Canadian clusters created by spillovers generated by knowledge-intensive industries. The paper also strives to develop the concept of regions as a nexus of competence, a notion that has already been put forward for firms, but that deserves to be extended to regions within nations and, ultimately, to nations as well.

The report indicates that there has been increasing congressional interest in efforts across the country to generate expanded regional economic growth through technological development and the creation of new firms.