The Center for Cluster Development created a five-part course on identifying regional industry clusters that is designed for local economic development practitioners and their stakeholders.
Course objectives
People who complete the course should be able to do the following:
- Know how to identify clusters
- Understand how to prioritize clusters for public support
- Be prepared to lead your region in cluster identification and prioritization process
Course sessions
There are five parts to this course:
About Clusters
- Explaining cluster development’s appeal
- Unpacking jargon
- Comparing clusters to other economic development approaches
- Funding cluster development strategies
Location Quotient
- Calculating and interpreting Location Quotients
- Data sources for LQs
- Problems with relying on LQ alone for cluster IDs
Qualitative Assessment
- Hard-to-measure sectors
- Community engagement
- Stakeholder engagement
Prioritizing Assistance
- Why Prioritize?
- Quality of Impacts
- Capacity for Success
- Regional History
- Cautions for Priorities
Beyond Identification
- Strategy & initiative design
- Creating a cluster organization
- Measurement & evaluation
- Evolving your approach
Why this course?
Cluster identification is the first step for a region deciding to pursue a cluster development strategy. Some regions embark on this path and then realize that identifying local industry clusters is more difficult than imagined — this course can help with that. Some regions discover they have multiple clusters and are not certain how to proceed — this course can help with that too.
Here are some of the reasons economic development practitioners want to learn about clusters:
- You have a limited budget for company recruitment and want to understand how to maximize your impact.
- Local education and workforce providers want to organize industry-driven training and need to know where to start.
- Your region is seeking greater economic diversification, and you need to identify your existing and emerging clusters.
- A federal, state, or philanthropic funder wants to support a regional industry cluster, and you need to start with an assessment.
- You think an industry gives your region a competitive edge, but you want to be able to benchmark its strength against your peers.
How the course was created
This course on cluster identification was produced through a robust process, including the following steps.
- Author experience working with cluster development professionals and regional cluster initiative funders.
- Assessments of federal programs that fund regional cluster development strategies.
- Reviews of academic literature and regional strategy documents and impact reports.
- Interviews with regional industry cluster leadership.
- Feedback from cluster development researchers and consultants.
- Testing with two cohorts of regional economic development practitioners.
Facilitation available
We know that some people will learn best from the opportunity to discuss the course material, ask questions, or work through the exercises with an instructor.
To support this type of learning, the cluster identification course (or individual sessions) can be facilitated in-person or virtually by Jason Rittenberg, the curriculum’s primary author, for a low cost. Contact rittenberg [at] excelregions.com to get started.