Related Projects
Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program, Advanced Industries Series
Aimed at describing and advancing U.S. advanced industries (characterized by R&D- and STEM-worker intensive industrial concerns), the Brookings Metropolitan Policy Program's Advanced Industries Series provides ground-breaking research and innovative strategy recommendations aimed at expanding the large role these industries play in delivering regional and national prosperity.
Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC)
The Initiative for a Competitive Inner City (ICIC) is a nonprofit research and strategy organization and the leading authority on U.S. inner city economies and the businesses that thrive there. Founded in 1994 by Harvard Business School Professor Michael Porter, ICIC strengthens inner city economies by providing businesses, governments and investors with the most comprehensive and actionable information in the field about urban market opportunities.
Founded in 1983, Jobs for the Future began as a regional nonprofit working with a few states to assess their workforce needs—helping employers find skilled workers, and helping workers move into higher-wage jobs. Today, we work to expand the college, career, and life prospects of low-income youth and adults across 25 states.
Building on 30 years of experience, we are working to fix all “leaks” along the education-to-career pipeline. We aim to ensure that employers have the skilled workers needed to succeed in today's economy. We also design and recommend federal and state policies to support these innovations.
Maryann Feldman: Defining Economic Development
Maryann Feldman in Forbes: How Can America Compete? U.S. Suggests New Economic Framework
Maryann P. Feldman is the Heninger Distinguished Professor in the Department of Public Policy at the University of North Carolina. Her research and teaching interests focus on the areas of innovation, the commercialization of academic research and the factors that promote technological change and economic growth. A large part of Dr. Feldman’s work concerns the geography of innovation – investigating the reasons why innovation clusters spatially and the mechanisms that support and sustain industrial clusters. Her dissertation, which was subsequently published as a book, was entitled the Geography of Innovation.
Her most recent work is exploring emerging industries, entrepreneurship and the process of regional transformation. This was the topic of the edited book, Cluster Genesis: the origins of technology-based economic development. She has written extensively on the early development and growth of biotechnology, as an example of a transformative technology. She has recently completed a study of the industrial applications of optical science, which will be published in Economic Geography. This work demonstrated typologies of places that were able to sustain industrial optics through a variety of economic development strategies.
MIT REAP (Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program)
The MIT Regional Entrepreneurship Acceleration Program (MIT REAP) is a capstone global initiative at MIT designed to help regions accelerate economic growth and job creation through innovation-driven entrepreneurship (IDE). Partner regions form multi-disciplinary teams and commit to a two-year learning engagement with MIT. During this engagement, teams work with world-renowned MIT faculty and the broader REAP community through a series of action-learning activities to build and implement a custom regional strategy for enhancing their IDE ecosystems.
New Skills at Work Initiative (JPMorgan Chase & Co.)
The numbers seem to contradict each other: unemployment is high across the globe, while recent data reveals that employers are having trouble finding workers who are trained for the jobs that are available, particularly in skilled labor and professional positions. And more than 50% of global CEOs are concerned that a key skills gap could limit their growth prospects. What can we do to ensure that people are trained and competitive for the skilled jobs of the 21st century?
Around the world, employers, educators, policymakers, training organizations, and others have recognized the critical importance of tackling the skills gap. Helping people develop the skills they need to compete for today's jobs can transform lives and strengthen economies. Through New Skills at Work, JPMorgan Chase will use its resources, expertise, and global reach to help inform and accelerate efforts to support demand-driven skills training.
The Pew Charitable Trusts (Data Visualizations/ Multimedia Gallery)
The Pew Charitable Trusts is driven by the power of knowledge to solve today's most challenging problems. Pew applies a rigorous, analytical approach to improve public policy, inform the public and invigorate civic life. The organization's data visualizations and multimedia gallery provide a unique insight into the policy environment.
The U.S. Competitiveness Project
The U.S. Competitiveness Project is a research-led effort to understand and improve the competitiveness of the United States - that is, the ability of firms operating in the U.S. to compete successfully in the global economy while supporting high and rising living standards for Americans. The Project focuses especially on the roles that business leaders do and can play in promoting U.S. competitiveness. The Project approaches current challenges to U.S. competitiveness as a matter of global concern, not just as an American issue.
Faculty from the Harvard Business School lead the Project. Along with colleagues from other leading institutions, HBS faculty are conducting research in areas such as innovation, manufacturing, entrepreneurship, company location choices, firm governance, local business ecosystems, human capital, K-12 education, fiscal policy, tax policy, capital markets, environmental sustainability, democracy, and international trade. The research is being developed in close collaboration with leaders from business, labor, policy, the sciences, and academia in order to pinpoint concrete actions and recommendations for improving U.S. competitiveness. The project is committed to identifying practical steps that leaders, especially in business, can take to strengthen the U.S. economy. Click here to learn more.
A comprehensive economic development strategy (CEDS) is designed to bring together the public and private sectors in the creation of an economic roadmap to diversify and strengthen regional economies. The CEDS should analyze the regional economy and serve as a guide for establishing regional goals and objectives, developing and implementing a regional plan of action, and identifying investment priorities and funding sources. A CEDS integrates a region's human and physical capital planning in the service of economic development. Integrated economic development planning provides the flexibility to adapt to global economic conditions and fully utilize the region's unique advantages to maximize economic opportunity for its residents by attracting the private investment that creates jobs for the region's residents.