Adam Belz -- Economic development efforts in the U.S. have typically focused on cutting taxes and regulation, or giving incentives to individual companies. None of this works, according to Michael Porter, a strategist at Harvard Business School who spoke Monday at the University of Minnesota. What drives high-wage job growth, higher patenting rates and economic resiliency is industry clusters, Porter said, and government should be investing in them by helping to launch training initiatives, for instance.
“When this president came in, he and his team saw the limitations on how economic development was done, and that led to the new approach on focusing on regional innovation and regional clusters,” Porter said.
“I’m just so pleased that we can do this here, today, not in Washington, because actually it should be done here,” Porter said. “It’s people like the leaders and the faculty at the Humphrey School, it’s the Minneapolis-St. Paul region that’s been so willing to take responsibility for its own development and its future.”