A Governor's Guide to Cluster-Based Economic Development

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.