National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country's natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency's value, as classical economics insists.

A nation's competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade. Companies gain advantage against the world's best competitors because of pressure and challenge. They benefit from having strong domestic rivals, aggressive home-based suppliers, and demanding local customers. 

National prosperity is created, not inherited. It does not grow out of a country's natural endowments, its labor pool, its interest rates, or its currency's value, as classical economics insists.

A nation's competitiveness depends on the capacity of its industry to innovate and upgrade. Companies gain advantage against the world's best competitors because of pressure and challenge. They benefit from having strong domestic rivals, aggressive home-based suppliers, and demanding local customers. 

America has lost millions of manufacturing jobs since 1980, which has been a serious economic blow to many U.S. metropolitan areas.

In response, metros have pursued an array of economic development strategies, some aimed at protecting or enhancing their manufacturing base, others at diversifying their local economies and attracting new kinds of industries, particularly service firms. 

Five years after the financial crisis began in earnest with the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the negative impact from a damaged banking system on the real economy continues to be felt. Continued stress in the global financial system provides the backdrop to high levels of unemployment, low levels of business borrowing, and unsustainable public finances in many countries. At the same time the impact of climate change increasingly challenges communities coping with a changing environment.

The Regional Clusters Initiative is a pilot program launched in September 2010 by the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) to promote and support 10 regional industry clusters across the United States. Clusters act as a networking hub to connect large firms, researchers, regional economic organizations, investors, and small businesses.

Regional industry clusters represent a potent source of productivity at a moment of national vulnerability to global economic competition, which has put the nation's capacity for generating stable, well-paying jobs for many U.S. workers at risk. While the federal government has supported cluster development, the current programs are inadequate for bolstering competitive regions and competitive clusters in particular.

Clusters are a key element of technology-based economic growth policy aimed at boosting the nation's technology clusters, which are regional concentrations of technology R&D and production, including pools of skilled labor, research facilities, and partnership mechanisms for research and production scale-up. This economic and policy analysis brief from the National Institute of Standards and Technology, an agency within the U.S.

Hosted by the U.S. Department of Commerce, the 2008 National Summit on American Competitiveness held in Washington, DC on September 18, 2007 gathered the nation's premier leaders in business, government, and academia to address steps that the public and private sectors should take to help secure America's competitive position in the global economy. Core components and lessons included education and workforce issues, energy independence, and partnerships in innovation. Participants included former U.S.

This 2007 report by the Council on Competitiveness benchmarks current U.S. competitiveness against twenty years of domestic and global economic data. The baseline year of 1986 was chosen because it marked the beginning of cyclical expansion in the domestic economy, a high dollar, and an exploding trade deficit, which put the concept of competitiveness on the national agenda. It also marked the creation of the Council on Competitiveness. The report is a wide-ranging assessment of how the changing global economy presents new challenges for the future.

This report from the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation suggests that the U.S. can boost its competitiveness by targeting the health of its traded sectors. Offering 50 federal policy recommendations for reviving traded sector establishments with examples including Boeing and Walmart, the report calls for a comprehensive strategy organized around the “4 Ts” (technology, tax, trade, and talent) to strengthen the ability of U.S. traded firms to compete in the global market.