5G is here now – at least in some places – and its impact on industry clusters will be intense. 5G rollout plans by AT&T, Sprint and others will have a dramatic effect on which geographic areas are at a technology advantage versus those that are at a clear disadvantage. 5G services impact IoT, AR, VR, Big Data, and other internet platform and cloud technologies that, in turn, will impact most every industry. At Industry Building Blocks (IBB) we estimate that 5G technologies will significantly impact at least 7,000 of the top 20,000 global industries.

On June 29th, 2016, the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, the President of the United States, Barack Obama, and the President of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, discussed ways to advance trade and competitiveness, at the 2016 North American Leaders’ Summit. 

Brad McDearman and Ryan Donahue - Economic development organizations often talk of competing for foreign direct investment. But arguably, the best form of FDI requires little competition at all. Instead, firms are drawn to a metro area not by low costs or incentives, but by the region’s unique specializations—including supply chains and customers, skilled workforce, trade relationships, and research institutions.

On Friday, December 19, 2014, EDA's Regulatory Revision Final Rule appeared in the Federal Register. The new regulations will take effect on January 20, 2015. 

Things to Know: 

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im Bank) has joined forces with the Virginia Small Business Development Center/George Mason University to assist local businesses to boost their export sales and add quality American jobs as part of Ex-Im Bank's City/State Program. 

Caribbean Journal -- It may be time to create economic “clusters” to spur growth in Jamaica, according to Densil Williams, Professor of International Business and Executive Director of the Mona School of Business Management at the University of the West Indies. Williams, who was addressing the Western Jamaica Economic Forum this week, said creating such clusters would bring “immense benefits to the business sector and ultimately the country.”

The TCI Network is committed to fostering knowledge sharing among practitioners. Presentations and other material of TCI conferences are a great tool for this purpose as they contain advanced theory and practice on competitiveness upgrading efforts, cluster development and innovation support globally and are widely used among practitioners in the network to advance in their daily activity. That is why TCI publishes all available conference material on their social medial channels.
 

Important Deadlines 
Required Letter of Intent (LOI), December 3, 2014, due 5:00 pm local time.
Full Proposal Submission January 28, 2015, due 5:00 pm local time.
 

On Monday, November 17, 2014, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Penny Pritzker announced that the U.S. Commerce Department’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) is accepting proposals for a national partner to help coordinate the Accelerating Industry-led Regional Partnerships for Talent Development Program, a new learning exchange that will focus on building critical regional partnerships to accelerate job skills development across America.

Theory into Practice -- The Geography of Jobs map is a dynamic visualization of job gains and losses over the last 15+ years for every metro area in the U.S. The red and blue bubbles represent a rolling 12-month net change in total employment for each metro area.

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