Competitiveness Archives - Colorado-based Business and Economic Research

The 14th, and final, stop on Governor Hickenlooper’s Bottom Up Eco Devo Planning tour landed at the Arvada Center earlier today. About 200 citizens and business leaders from the metro counties convened to provide input. The bottom up information gathering process is scheduled to be wrapped up at the end of April.

Attendees were grouped by their county of residence and asked to discuss a common set of questions and issues. The following paragraphs provide some of the topics discussed by fellow Broomfielders.

Topic: What can government do better to support business?
• Make it easier for businesses to find out about local assistance.
• Become more aware of how to support the unique needs of specific industries and clusters such as photonics, aerospace, nanotechnology, and the biosciences. To this point, a brief discussion focused on how elected officials can become more “military-friendly”, which includes support of the defense, homeland security, aerospace industries and their supply chain.
• Continue to further strengthen relationships between education, government, economic developers, workforce training, and the private sector.
• Improvement of the 36 corridor, including completion of FasTracks.
• Establish a visionary group that provides a long-term economic vision for Colorado – that covers all aspects of economic development from research to recruitment to retention. During the 1980s and 1990s, the Colorado Advanced Technology Institute (CATI), helped develop many of the clusters and industries that are critical to the state’s present economy.

Topic: What are areas that are important to the success of Broomfield?
• Maintain a designated level of primary jobs (jobs that create other jobs).
• Support innovation.
• Strength of neighboring communities (higher education, research facilities, distribution services) and realization that it is not necessary to duplicate their competencies.

Topic: What are Broomfield success stories?
• The foresight of city and county leaders that provided Broomfield with a diverse tax base derived from a strong mix of retail and industry.
• Development of the 1st Bank Center.
• 36 Commuting Solutions has developed partnerships between local municipalities to secure funds for improvements of the 36 corridor.

Colorado is blessed with an intelligent and creative populaton who have an abundance of enthusiasm and good ideas. It will be easy to organize and prioritize their thoughts and opinions. The challenge will come in finding funds to implement the plan.

A more complete summary of this event and previous meetings will be available on the Bottom Up website.

Harvard Business Professor Michael Porter is widely recognized for his research in the competitiveness of cities, states, regions, and nations. His studies have emphasized clusters, specialized skills, infrastructure, and commerce as distinguishing factors that delineate the prosperity of these areas.

Most recently Porter measured the performance of clusters within each of the states at the National Governors Association Winter Meeting 2011 (February 26). At that meeting he talked about strategies that would allow the states to become more competitive in the future .

In addition, Porter prepared economic profiles for each of the 50 states. The 50-slide PowerPoint presentations, which were released at the NGA meeting, are formatted in a way that allows for easy comparisons between the states.

For example, it is to match Colorado’s biotech cluster against others in the nation. In 2008, Colorado was ranked 25th in biopharmaceuticals, with 2,032 employees and 11th in medical devices with 13,440 workers.

Each presentation begins with a performance snapshot with a position and trend ranking, by quintile, in five key areas. As well, Porter identified the “strong” clusters for each state.

Colorado’s overall prosperity rating was in the second quintile; however, it was rated in the 4th trend quintile. Essentially the state has strong output per capita; however, it is trending downward. This might suggest Colorado’s competitive position might be in jeopardy.

A second area of possible concern is labor mobilization (labor force/civilian population). On a positive note, Colorado is in the top ten; however, it is in the fourth trend quintile. Again, this is a strength that is trending downward.

There is better news for Productivity (average private wages) and Innovation (Patents per 10,000 workers). Colorado was ranked in the second quintile in both strategic categories. From a trend perspective it was also in the second quintile. These are areas where the state has maintained its strengths and remained competitive.

Finally, the state was ranked in the second quintile for cluster strength and in the top trend quintile. This points to increased strength, as defined by greater market share, in its “strong clusters”.

Porter identified Colorado’s top five clusters as:
• Business Services
• Distribution Services
• Entertainment
• Oil and Gas Products and Services
• Aerospace Vehicles and Defense.

The presentation highlights subtle strengths and weaknesses not mentioned in this brief overview. As such, it is recommended reading for any one interested in understanding the opportunities and challenges Colorado might face moving forward.

Tag: Competitiveness

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