The Council on Competitiveness (Council) has been working on regional economic development since it launched its Clusters of Innovation project in 1999 in cooperation with Harvard professor Michael Porter. As a leadership body, the Council focuses on those issues that increase U.S. productivity, innovative capacity and global competitiveness, the key elements that drive the Council’s mission of maintaining and increasing the living standards of U.S. citizens. The Council focuses on regions because the United States does not have a national economy, but is the sum of the regional economies. And as Porter puts it, “A region’s competitiveness and standard of living (wealth) is determined by the productivity with which it uses its human, capital and natural resources.”
