Economic Strategy Solutions

We provide critical support for your competitiveness and economic development goals in these key areas:

• Economic Insights
• Strategies
• Solutions

IHS Economic Strategy Solutions enables you to:

• Leverage the extensive IHS databases, deep industry expertise and forecasting models for economic development purposes.
• Identify and leverage key regional assets, advantages and drivers of competitiveness.
• Position your region to launch innovative companies, attract new investment and ultimately achieve regional prosperity.
• Integrate comparative analysis and local viewpoints that set stage for action.
• Implement highly tailored strategies derived from direct stakeholder input.
• Shift mindsets within your region from planning to implementation.
• Transform roles for economic actors and develop more flexible and adaptable platforms for strategy implementation.
• Redefine measures of economic success by developing new metrics.

Local, state and national economic development organizations - Identify regional drivers of competitiveness, economic challenges and leading industries. Mobilize regional stakeholders to work collectively toward a common economic development vision, set of actionable initiatives and metrics for evaluating success.

See Case Studies #1-3

Regional planning or development organizations - Align transportation, housing, resiliency or other social and environmental planning goals with economic development. Engage the private sector in regional visioning processes to ensure long-term, sustainable economic growth.

See Case Study #4

Business roundtables, chambers of commerce and other industry membership organizations - Work with key private sector leaders to formulate clear, action-oriented competitive strategies that will have a demonstrable ROI for companies in the region.

See Case Studies #5-6

Trade associations and industry clusters - Formulate industry-specific competitive strategies based on comparative analysis, industry input and global and regional economic and market trends. Mobilize industry leaders to work collectively to identify shared priorities and implement joint initiatives.

See Case Study #7

International donor agencies - Instill principles and bring stakeholder-driven strategy development to transitional and developing economies around the world.

See Case Studies #8-11

Case Study #1: Alaska Forward: Towards a Next Generation Economy

Challenge: In 2009, Alaska was faced with a one dimensional economy–natural resources–at a time when demand for the products and services of other reasonably strong sectors like tourism and seafood were being hit hard by the national recession. In addition, long-standing sectors like forestry and  boat building were also in very steep decline. Leaders knew that a fresh look at the economy, updated forecasts and new ways of thinking about economic development were necessary.

Solution: The IHS economic analysts and economic development strategy experts were retained in a highly competitive selection process to take on the challenge. We designed a project of two phases. The first was to produce a comprehensive situation analysis and the second to mobilize state leaders and go to work, cluster-by-cluster to identify critical issues and to go to work with new public policies, new public-private partnerships and new institutional reforms to revitalize the state's economy. Bringing the best of the IHS family into the effort, the economic experts in IHS Global Insight were linked up with the oil and gas experts of IHS CERA (Cambridge Energy Research Associates) to develop the assessment. Analyses were made of the current economic situation, forecasts for oil and gas, comparative benchmarks, and the capacity of the state's economic development organizations to tackle the challenge.

Results: Alaska is now using the Situation Assessment to mobilize and inform the efforts of cluster working groups being implemented across the state. They include: tourism, trade and logistics, forest products and alternative energy. Each group is moving forward with actionable solutions, soon to be woven into a state strategic plan for economic development that is already being implemented at the regional level. Overseeing this effort is the Alaska Forward Leadership Council made up of top business leaders, the president of the university and the executive team of the state department of economic development.

Case Study #2: Abu Dhabi Industrial Development Strategy

Challenge: Abu Dhabi's rapid economic growth over the past few decades has been based on the oil sector. While the oil sector has generated and will continue to generate the resources required to build a modern and successful economy, it is also recognized that the volatility of the international oil price makes the achievement of stable and steady economic growth difficult.

Abu Dhabi's Economic Vision 2030 put forth a goal for the non-oil sector to raise its contribution to GDP from 41% in 2005 to 64% by 2030. In order to accomplish this goal, economic diversification with a focus on the manufacturing industry were key priorities.

Solution: To ensure that the industrial sector will contribute fully to the achievement of Abu Dhabi's economic diversification goals by 2030, one of Economic Strategy Solutions experts was contracted by the Emirate of Abu Dhabi's Department of Economic Development in 2010 to articulate a comprehensive and fully integrated cluster-based medium term (five-year) industrial development strategy for the Emirate.

The objective of the Abu Dhabi Five-Year Industrial Strategy was to provide a focused framework for industrial planning in the medium term, linking the industrial strategy of the Emirate to the overall government and departmental strategies.

The exercise involved a detailed quantitative and qualitative analysis of the current industrial structure of Abu Dhabi, of the policy environment in which the industrial sector operates and of the current and potential comparative and competitive advantages that the Emirate possesses for industrial development.

Results: The resulting Industrial Development Strategy contained an overall industrial strategy framework for the Emirate and individual development strategies for each of ten focus industries and potential clusters including: aerospace, renewable energies, semiconductors, steel, aluminum, engineered metal products, petrochemicals and plastics products. In addition, it outlined the economic, social, environmental and regional development impact of the industrial strategy, related enabler requirements and investment promotion activities to support the focus industries.

This strategy and associated recommended initiatives set the stage for a series of detailed implementation plans for the years 2011 - 2015 for key government and private sector actors, that paves the way for Abu Dhabi to achieve its economic diversification goals.

Case Study #3: Kazakhstan National Competitiveness Program

Challenge: In 2004, Kazakhstan's President Nazarbayev announced a major shift in Kazakhstan's economic development strategy, adopting the competitiveness paradigm as the primary strategic tool. The overarching goal of this shift was to put in place a strategy to diversify the economy, so that the oil and gas sector does not dominate and create a "Dutch Disease" situation.

Solution: In partnership with Harvard's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness and J.E. Austin & Associates, team members from Economic Strategy Solutions assisted Kazakhstan's Government to develop its National Competitiveness Program.

The project involved identifying industries and market segments, evaluating and selecting market segments and clusters, developing strategic action plans and implementing a skills and knowledge program. Five clusters were selected for the pilot cluster launch phase: tourism, food products, oil and gas Equipment, metallurgy and transportation and logistics.

Economic Strategy Solutions team members designed and implemented the pilot cluster program, and Prof. Michael Porter of Harvard University's Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness served as the project's academic advisor.

Results: President Nazarbayev publicly endorsed the approach, setting a goal for Kazakhstan to quickly move up from its current WEF competitiveness ranking of 61 to the top 50 in the world.

The process of developing the plan built momentum and excitement for the subsequent cluster competitiveness program by involving key stakeholders in the process, ensuring there was strong media relations activity and by stimulating quick wins which resulted in immediate improvements in competitiveness at the enabling environment and firm level.

Case Study #4: Integrating Seattle's Economic Development and Planning Activities within the Puget Sound Prosperity Partnership

Challenge: The greater Seattle economy was challenged by foreign competition, market shifts for many traditional products and fast changing technology. Moreover, the Puget Sound region economy's considerable dependence on the aerospace and information and technology sectors was exposed by the bursting of the internet bubble and subsequent economic downturn.

Puget Sound's leaders realized that the existing fragmented approach to economic development and regional planning did not provide the region with the required tools to confront these rapidly changing economic and market realities.

Solution: Economic Strategy Solutions was hired to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the Puget Sound region's economy and competitive advantages and then implement a participatory process to develop strategies for five pilot clusters. Economic Strategy Solutions designed both the overall Prosperity Partnership approach and participated directly in strategy development tasks and early implementation efforts. More than 150 stakeholders participated in this project and more than 1,100 leaders from these organizations participated in an array of activities to launch and sustain the effort.

Results: Economic Strategy Solutions processes were instrumental in formalizing a broad-based public-private dialogue that remains in place today as the engine that sustains the Prosperity Partnership six years after inception. This broad-based coalition has grown to more than 300 business, government, labor, nonprofit and education organizations. The Prosperity Partnership is a more flexible and adaptable public-private platform that can effectively respond to economic and market changes and continually recalibrate the Puget Sound region to remain competitive.

The Prosperity Partnership has been highlighted in numerous publications and panels as a best practice in regional economic development public private partnerships. Accomplishments attributed to effort include:

• Launching Washington's first statewide aerospace association, the Aerospace Futures Alliance, and the first statewide clean technology trade association, the Washington Clean Technology Alliance.
• Increasing state investment by more than $90 million to fill existing capacity in high-demand degrees at Washington's higher education institutions.
• Developing a metropolitan business plan to increase exports of energy efficiency products and services.
• Initiating Global Health Nexus, Seattle - a regional collaboration to increase national and international awareness of the region's global health strengths.

Case Study #5: Strengthening Oregon's Competitiveness through Public-Private Partnerships

Challenge: The Oregon Business Council needed an efficient way to solicit industry input on Oregon's economic competitiveness challenges and establish a shared vision for creating quality jobs in Oregon.

Solution: As the Oregon Business Council's primary cluster strategy consultant, one of the IHS Economic Strategy Solutions experts helped the state identify and organize its traded sector industry clusters. She assisted each industry cluster to formalize a shared industry strategy and set of action-oriented initiatives that would inform the Oregon Business Plan, a public-private strategy for Oregon's economic development. The Oregon Cluster Network was also created to help cluster facilitators share best practices and connect industry leaders with university researchers, schools, media, venture capital and other resources to help generate new prospects for business recruitment, develop relevant economic and market data and guide public policy.

Results: The state is able to quickly and efficiently connect with private sector industry groups to identify opportunities, address challenges and set an annual policy agenda for economic development.

Case Study #6: Oakland Partnership - Laying Out a Vision for a Turnaround of the Oakland Economy

Challenge: A 2007 study established a clear picture of the current state of Oakland's economy, its relative competitiveness and attractiveness and the issues hampering economic growth and continued improvement in the city's quality of life. Building upon this study, Oakland Mayor Ron Dellums launched The Oakland Partnership, a public-private collaborative effort focused on Oakland's economic development. The goal of the Oakland Partnership was to create an innovative and equitable, globally competitive regional economy that would create 10,000 new jobs in the subsequent five years.

Solution: Economic Strategy Solutions team members facilitated the process of convening four key industry clusters: trade and logistics, healthcare and life sciences, green technology; and art, design and digital media. Economic Strategy Solutions helped the Oakland Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce and Mayor Dellums' office to organize a broad-based group of companies, educational institutions, government representatives, labor leaders and community members to lay out a vision for a turnaround of the Oakland economy by leveraging proximity to UC Berkeley and Silicon Valley while building on Oakland's unique strengths.

Results: With assistance from the Economic Strategy Solutions, each cluster identified top priorities, strategies for the growth of the sector and went on to implement several important initiatives that enhanced the region's economic competitiveness. Accomplishments attributed to effort include:

• More than half of the 40 cluster initiatives were completed
• 9,336 jobs were created with the most dramatic gains in the sectors of focus.
• More than $3 billion for port related investments
• Nearly $1 billion for hospital related investments
• $1.6 billion in venture capital for East Bay alternative energy companies
• More than $3 million for new workforce development programs

Case Study #7: Engaging the Private Sector in the East Bay Green Corridor Partnership

Challenge: The East Bay Green Corridor Partnership, a partnership of the University of California - Berkeley, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, eight East Bay cities, and two community college districts wanted to build on the region's existing strength as a center for emerging green technology, innovation and entrepreneurship.

Solution: As a consultant to the East Bay Green Corridor Partnership, one IHS expert identified relevant private sector companies and facilitated roundtable discussions with industry leaders from five green tech sectors. Based on both quantitative research and industry input, she created a roadmap for improving the region's market share in green building, energy efficiency, environmental consulting, recycling and solar energy.

Results: The East Bay Green Corridor has implemented several of the recommendations, such as streamlining the solar permitting process across cities, launching a trade association for the residential energy efficiency industry and new workforce development programs.

Case Study #8: Advancing the Competitiveness of Ethiopia's Hides, Skins and Leather Industry

Challenge: Although Ethiopia's economy is built on agriculture, the country lacks well-developed agricultural supply and value chains. Consequently, Ethiopia has experienced large structural deficits in its food supplies, requiring substantial emergency aid to fill the gap.

The US Agency for International Development sought to increase the rate of economic growth in Ethiopia while reducing poverty and increasing availability of and access to food. Achieving these goals would require increasing the productivity of Ethiopia's human capital and natural resources, as well as enhancing market efficiency and competitiveness.

Solution: Team members of Economic Strategy Solutions implemented one of the first comprehensive competitiveness initiatives in Eastern Africa. The objective was to identify market opportunities and stimulate market-led agro-enterprise and cooperative linkages with domestic, regional and international markets to significantly improve the export performance of Ethiopia's key economic sectors.

Economic Strategy Solutions assembled a working group of 50 top leaders from industry, academia and government associated with the hides, skins and leather sector and based on analysis and their own firsthand knowledge, worked with these stakeholders to identify the myriad of critical issues faced by the industry and put them in priority order.

Results: Several initiatives were launched, and many, after transfer to the Ethiopian Leather Industries Association with assistance of Economic Strategy Solutions, are continuing under non-donor funding. As a result, the Ethiopian hides, skins and leather cluster has become increasingly vibrant as cluster participation grows, new initiatives are launched and the industry sees concrete results from their efforts.

One of the highest visibility action initiatives of the cluster's working group was the launch of the Taytu "Made in Ethiopia-" branded leather bags and accessories. With Economic Strategy Solutions' assistance, 12 independent leather garment and textile manufacturers formed a strategic alliance designed to bring former competitors together to work collaboratively. Economic Strategy Solutions provided the Taytu consortium with cluster leadership, management and marketing support, while UNIDO provided technical assistance. Taytu's product sales soared after product introductions in Milan, Paris, New York and Los Angeles.

Case Study #9: Competitiveness Agenda for the GAP Region, Turkey

Challenge: Despite billions of dollars in mainly infrastructure investments over the previous 15 years, Turkey's Southeast Anatolia (GAP) region was still the poorest in Turkey and the gap between incomes and quality of life in the region had not improved.

Turkey's leaders and the European Commission realized that the region was not sufficiently taking advantage of its considerable assets and that a new approach to regional development was called for.

Solution: For the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), team members of Economic Strategy Solutions assembled ten international experts for a three-month engagement funded by the European Commission to develop a new strategy for the GAP region.

Rigorous competitive analyses were conducted in the field for the nine Turkish provinces of the GAP region with special focus on the agriculture, tourism and renewable energy sectors aiming to identify strategies to most effectively convert to a value-added economy.

Results: The Competitiveness Agenda for the GAP Region contained a vision, strategy and specific action plan for the entire GAP Region, in addition to three cluster-specific roadmaps and action plans for the agriculture, renewable energy and tourism sectors.

Economic Strategy Solutions team members helped identify sources of previously "hidden" competitive advantage and developed recommendations for a significant shift in policy, featuring a public/private partnership approach, intensive internationalization program, and regional branding as the emerging world's leading renewable energy & organic product center, along with targeted applied technology centers and privatization of significant portions of the irrigation system.

The project is notable in that, for a region that has been seen as the most backward in Turkey, a far-reaching, visionary strategy has been adopted, with one of the most advanced, ambitious environmental sustainability approach at its core - the first large region in the developing world to do so. The Prime Minister adopted the Agenda's recommendations and US$11 bn has been allocated for their implementation.

Case Study #10: Guyana Trade and Investment Project (GTIS)

Challenge: Guyana found itself at a crucial juncture as the country reacted to international economic trends and attempted to adapt to the increasingly globalized, international marketplace. This struggle to emerge from a prolonged economic downturn resulted in large part from ingrained constraints that had Guyana's efforts to become more economically competitive.

The Guyana Trade and Investment Project (GTIS) funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID), provides support to enterprises, private sector organizations and government institutions to help Guyana become more competitive and exploit emerging export market opportunities arising from international trade agreements.

Solution: The GTIS Project, with a crucial two-year input from team members of Economic Strategy Solutions at its inception, carried out industrial development activities aimed at strengthening the ability of targeted Guyanese industries to meet critical success factors, become more competitive, establish linkages with international markets and attract foreign investment.

Economic Strategy Solutions was brought in to catalyze leadership and focused on collaborative action to bring together government, business and community leaders to develop concrete action initiatives to enhance industry competitiveness. Economic Strategy Solutions worked with stakeholders in the tourism, agriculture, forest products and fisheries industries to define the necessary strategic directions for each industry to take and to define a set of concrete initiatives that would maximize development potential.

Results: In part as a result of Economic Strategy Solutions efforts, the GTIS project attracted $39.8 million in private investment and additional project funding, leveraging over five dollars for every USAID dollar spent and project activities created or enhanced over 4,000 jobs. The success of the GTIS project prompted USAID/Guyana's Economic Growth Office to request support for the implementation of a follow on GTIS II project, which commenced in 2009.

Case Study #11: EC-Funded Technical Assistance for Industrial Restructuring of Şanlıurfa Project (Turkey)

Challenge: Turkey's Şanlıurfa province has benefited from a range of national economic development instruments including large-scale public investments as well as inter-regional transfers and incentives. But despite these investments, income per capita remains around half the Turkish average and the economy of the province still exhibited an unhealthy reliance on public investments and spending, commodity crops, inefficient agricultural methods and low technology usage. It was critically important to organize the industrial sectors and other economic development actors for Şanliurfa to more effectively capitalize on the province's rich natural and industrial attributes.

Solution: In 2009, one of Economic Strategy Solutions' experts was retained by the United Nations Development Program as Team Leader of an international consulting team to implement a key portion of the EC-funded Industrial Restructuring of Sanliurfa (IRS) Project. Rigorous competitive assessments were conducted of three strategic industrial sectors: agri-food, textiles and apparel and specialized manufacturing for agriculture. Then the next phase of the project was executed using a participatory approach, building capacity for public-private dialogue fostering the development of an environment conducive to improving the competitiveness, innovation and export of Turkish enterprises.

Results: These efforts resulted in the development of an Integrated Industrial Development Plan which put forth a policy framework and specific recommendations to implement the economic vision for Şanlıurfa as a whole. In addition, it included detailed roadmaps for the three priority sectors, a long list of project-based interventions for the short, medium and longer terms and 13 detailed project fiches for attracting investment. Further, throughout the strategy development process, tangible shifts in the mentality of a key set of entrepreneurs and their government and university counterparts were noted, who were making progress on specific joint initiatives that resulted in the introduction of new products and technologies and expanded access to markets.