S.C. leaders promote regional and cluster development partnerships

Teamwork needed to up incomes, officials say

‘Other parts of the state were organized and they were eating our lunch.’

Ron Ingle | CCU president and North Eastern Strategic Alliance co-chairman

Businesses and elected leaders must get involved in making economic clusters work to raise residents’ income faster than other states, S.C. leaders said Friday during the annual Growth Summit.

The idea of working together across geographic boundaries, a repeated theme for the annual summit, this time is urged as a critical component of the cluster strategy, launched as South Carolina’s long-term economic plan in December 2003. Clusters, used in communities across the country, combine public and private investment to promote wealth growth in a region.

"We are very late to the party," said Ed Sellers, chief executive of Blue Cross-Blue Shield and chairman of the S.C. Council on Competitiveness, which is guiding the cluster strategy. "The Romans had regional planning."

Sellers and other state officials working on the clusters, including one for tourism, urged the 150 community leaders attending the Growth Summit to stop competing against one another and focus on beating other states. Coastal Carolina University and The Sun News sponsor the summit.

"The link is building more trust among institutions and businesses and the people who have really grown up competing with each other," said Harold Stowe of CCU’s E. Craig Wall Sr. College of Business Administration. "If we can build better trust and better understanding … maybe we will be able to make a lot more progress."

By Dawn Bryant

The Sun News

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