October 15, 2011
How Competitive is your City?
Four areas a city needs to excel. And if it can’t excel, at least it can be measured. (“You get what you measure,” my Dartmouth professor of management said.) And if a city resists measuring it, well, that’s usually because its leaders know it would fail, and they’d look bad. Just saying… Still, while these aren’t new, they are useful to take a look at:
“There are four categories to measure competitiveness:
- Human Resources are the most important factor in determining the competitiveness of a region. It is measured through education, training, skills, work experience, entrepreneurship, creativity, and risk tolerance.
- Economic Structure can be determined through variables such as: analysis of output, employment and investment data. There are several technical methods for this analysis, including location quotient, shift-share analysis, economic base analysis, productivity analysis, regional income indicators, investment indicators, etc.
- Territorial Endowments are measured through hard infrastructure such as: assets of a place, including markets, location and access, infrastructure, amenities, capital and finance, cost structures, and city image.
- Institutional Milieu is not as easily quantified, but social scientists have defined it by the following: social capital, such as trust, norms, and networks, that can improve the efficiency of society by facilitating coordinated actions. It is evaluated by governance, champion institutions and individuals, networks and interconnectivity, and norms and convention.
