Capital Region Competitive Strategy:
Nine Parish Region, Louisiana
Challenge
The Capital Region of Louisiana has historically relied on
two primary industries to drive the economy: petrochemicals
and government. Given global competition and changing industry
practices in the petrochemical industry as well as slow growth
in the public sector, the region sought to diversify the economy
to help ensure a more prosperous future. Government, business,
and community leaders from the nine-parish Capital Region
(including Baton Rouge and the surrounding rural and suburban
counties) wanted to spur economic growth while also addressing
quality of life and equity challenges. Because the region
did not have a history of collaboration, regional leaders
sought better capacity by working together to build innovative
strategies. Most of these nine parishes are rural and have
not worked effectively with the urban center in the past.
The historic relationship between the surrounding parishes
and East Baton Rouge is the common story of flight from the
city to move into better school districts in the suburbs.
Solution
ICF International is finishing the implementation of a comprehensive
cluster strategy project for the Greater Baton Rouge area.
The Chamber of Greater Baton Rouge is "anchoring"
the initiative for its partners. Cluster strategies include
actions in energy and petrochemicals' agriculture and food
products; visitors, arts, and entertainment; forest products;
health care and biomedical; transportation and logistics;
information services; and a new "seed cluster"—environmental
technologies. The initiative encompasses a four-phase process
of mobilization (briefings and outreach), diagnosis (systematic
analysis of regional performance, clusters, and foundations),
collaborative strategy process (three rounds of cluster working
groups), and development of an implementation strategy (management
structure for supporting cluster networks, action initiatives,
regional flagships, and regional performance monitoring).
A wide range of community leaders and stakeholders will participate
in the process and contribute to strategic action plans.
Benefit
When completed, the region will understand how its economy
is performing, where new opportunities are, and how its rural
and urban parishes can coordinate better to tackle their problems
and have feasible cluster action and flagship initiatives
to implement.
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