A Governor’s Guide to Cluster-Based Economic Development

NGA provides governors with the tools for structuring economic
development policies to help make business clusters more innovative
and competitive.

Contact: Paul Kalomiris
Economic and Technology Policy Studies
Contact: Philip Psilos
Economic and Technology Policy Studies

A Governor’s Guide to Cluster-Based Economic Development

http://www.nga.org/cda/files/AM02CLUSTER.pdf

In A Governors Guide to Cluster-Based Economic Development, NGA
provides governors with the tools for structuring economic development
policies to help make business clusters more innovative and competitive. The
guide provides a description of the distinctive assets and needs of state and
regional economies; an understanding of the advantages of clusters and
forces that make them develop, grow, mature, and reinvent themselves as
they decline; and guidance on policies that support clusters in urban and
rural, rich and poor regions.

Clusters grow and develop principally as entrepreneurial companies spin off
from larger, more established firms creating concentrations of competing and
collaborating firms that find advantage in remaining located nearby.
Institutions, such as universities and research centers, may spur the
development of clusters, or may be developed in response to the needs of
business, and play important roles in sustaining cluster competitiveness.

The report suggests four types of policy options for governors: 1) policies to
more efficiently organize and develop services to clusters; 2) policies that
target state investments to the specific needs of the states’ clusters; 3)
policies that increase networking and learning within and among clusters; and
4) policies that improve the clusters’ workforce.

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