ICF International can help
you find out where your region's economy has been,
where it is going, and where it needs to be in order
to achieve the goals of a high performing nation, state,
or region. We employ the following steps and strategies
in developing strong, sustainable economies:
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Mission: Collaborative Solutions to
Build High Performing Regions
In today's global economy, metropolitan regions are the center
of growth and the locus of innovation. Every region now faces
the challenge of establishing and sustaining its position
in the global marketplace. To succeed in the global economy
every region and its public and private leaders must:
- Build Prosperity—Understand international
markets, the structure and position of their economy, and
take steps to increase competitiveness
- Reduce Disparity—Understand the economic,
social, geographic and participatory "fairness"
of their communities and take steps to ensure improved equity
- Increase Sustainability—Understand the environmental
and growth challenges facing the region and how best to
manage them in a "smart manner"
- Strengthen Agility—Understand how information
and communications technology can be used to redefine and
improve the delivery of public and private services
Framework: Four Rules for a High
Performance Region
Our diverse body of experience has been acquired through
our assignments in North and South America, regions of Asia,
Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East. Through
work in many different cultures and economies, our team has
developed four fundamental principles or rules that can be
used by regions to effectively achieve higher performance.
Rule 1: Focus on Your Region, Not the Jurisdiction
- Your economy does not stop at political boundaries.
- The region is where we measure our prosperity, disparity,
and sustainability.
- A region is the distance an individual can commute to
work.
- Small nations are similar to regional economies due to
global linkages.
Do you know how your region is performing?
All regions compete: Are you thinking regionally
to act globally?
Rule 2: Competitive Clusters Drive Regional
Performance
- Clusters are the "engines" of your economy,
driving its prosperity.
- They comprise export industries, suppliers, and public
and private "input" institutions.
- Clusters generate revenue from outside the region and
from high economic multipliers.
- They may have "deep" value chains as well as
"broad" diversity of sectors.
- Clusters evolve from seed to emerging, to expanding and
transforming stages.
Do you know the structure of your region's
portfolio of clusters?
Do you know how your clusters are performing
compared to your competitors?
Rule 3: Create Regional Advantage to Enable
High Performance
- Regional performance—prosperity, disparity, sustainability—is
shaped by clusters and enabled by regional economic input
institutions or "foundations."
- Every region has a set of economic input "foundations"
that energize and support clusters—these are systems
that deliver human resources, technology, financing, physical
infrastructure, infostructure, business climate, and quality
of life.
- Clusters take shape and grow where they can find distinctive
economic input advantage.
Do you know your region's input advantages
and how well they support and respond to your clusters?
Are you prepared to use your regional assets
in new ways or make "legacy" investments to build
your region's future?
Rule 4: Collaborative Culture Enables High Performing
Regions
- High performing regions continually create distinctive
advantages in their economic input foundations and clusters.
- These advantages are enabled by a strong collaborative
culture.
- Collaborative culture means that public and private stakeholders
are able and willing to change behavior and make strategic
investments when needed.
- They think about regional performance in terms of building
agile communities of exchange—business to business,
business to institution, institution to institution.
Do you know your region's collaborative capacity?
Are you able to convene your marketplace of clusters and institutions
to create new sources of distinctive advantage?
A Proven Analytic and Collaborative
Strategy Process
Each of the ICF International offerings
applies a proven analytic and collaborative strategy process.
We accomplish our results by putting to work an integrated
set of proprietary techniques for measuring regional performance,
cluster analysis, economic input foundation evaluation, collaborative
process, and action implementation. We use these tools to
develop strategies that address regional performance challenges
in competitiveness, equity, sustainability, and productivity.
A Four-Phase Approach: Our strategy initiatives typically
encompass four phases of value-added service that are customized
to the needs of our clients:
- Mobilize: We listen to, educate, engage, and commit
public and private stakeholders to participate in the regional
collaborative strategy process. This phase is used to learn
about the region, to ensure buy-in, and to build readiness
of regional stakeholders for collaborative solutions, including
capacity building where required.
- Analyze: We complete a three-component diagnosis.
First, we assess and benchmark your region's overall performance,
including prosperity, disparity, sustainability, and agility.
We then analyze the structure and competitive position of
regional economic drivers—your existing and emerging
cluster portfolio—and their prospects. Depending on
client requirements, this may include determining the equitability
of opportunity, the sustainability of growth, and the agility
of development. We then assess the capacity, fit, and responsiveness
of regional input institutions to the needs of the economic
"drivers". This major analysis identifies baseline
regional performance status and structural performance challenges,
setting the stage for collaborative strategy.
- Catalyze: This multistep process produces realistic
actions that change behavior or create new investments to
achieve enhanced regional performance. We begin by organizing
and convening stakeholders around the regional performance
issues. Then, informed by this, we convene each of the entire
region's industry clusters and their key institutions. These
working groups first collaborate on defining their shared
challenges. Then, working with each group, we define collaborative
solutions, building from global best practices and our own
experience. This strategy development phase concludes with
formalizing collaborative business plans that result in
mutually beneficial actions and, more importantly, provide
a return on solution for every participant. In addition
to crafting strategies to improve the competitiveness, equitability,
sustainability, and agility of clusters, this process also
brings together regional leaders (stewards) with cluster
co-chairs to define cross-cutting "flagship" initiatives.
These initiatives are broad reforms and innovations that
will energize the entire regional economy.
- Realize: To ensure that the components of the regional
performance strategy are carried out, we develop an implementation
mechanism with regional leaders. Each implementation structure
is shaped to ensure and sustain continuity of regional performance
action strategies—for cluster groups, cluster actions
and flagships. The ICF International team often provides technical
assistance in designing and planning major action initiatives
arising from regional strategies, whether training initiatives
or technology institutions. Our strategy services always
focus on achieving change and momentum for continuous improvement.
To support these processes we can provide our clients with
information technology solutions that enable monitoring
regional performance on a continuing basis.
Our Offerings
 We
build from a platform of strong technical knowledge and proven
analytic and collaborative strategy process to offer our clients
the integrated services they require to achieve a high performing
regional economy. We can offer an integrated strategy or focus
on the critical challenges that face your region's performance.
Each of our offerings will always be tailored to meet your
needs:
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