Santa Fe Industry Cluster Gardening Strategy

[Gus Koehler]

I thought that some of you who don't live in Santa Fe but are interested
in its growth might find this interesting.  It could bear on some of the
research applied chaos and complexity groups associated with this list.
 
Santa Fe to Nurture Clusters to Diversify its Economy
A community essentially has two options for strategies to diversify its
economic base: traditional economic development or technology-based
economic development (TBED). The traditional approach of recruiting or
inducing companies to relocate to their community from elsewhere creates
an atmosphere of competition, rivalry and one-upmanship among cities and
regions as they bid to buy firms' location decisions. Often, it is also
difficult for small and mid-sized communities to compete on these terms.
The result, particularly with large manufacturing facilities, can be
publicly financed incentive packages that may prove economically more
expensive to a community than the benefits promised by the new
development. Increasingly, economic development professionals are
learning those promised jobs may never fully materialize.

TBED, on the other hand, provides a more sustainable approach toward
economic prosperity by encouraging the growth and expansion of firms
through investments in research and technology, innovation and the
commercial exploitation of new technologies. Communities within regions
see advantages to collaborating together, to encouraging larger state
and federal R&D investments, and to working with private and academic
researchers to foster an environment conducive to innovation. State and
regional TBED efforts benefit by learning from each other regarding the
success and failure of their programs and policies, hence the growing
popularity of SSTI's annual  <http://www.ssti.org/conference05.htm>
conferences.


A fundamental concept of cluster theory is that the interactions of
firms concentrated in a particular geographic area are beneficial to
those firms, giving them a competitive advantage to firms located
outside the area. For some industry sectors, additional non-industrial
resources of a region - such as risk capital and academic research
capacity - also can aid in the development of new technologies and
innovation, increasing the firms' abilities to compete globally. Cluster
approaches to economic development and TBED share the similar desires of
encouraging collaboration, university-industry partnerships for
research, and other strategic alliances within a regional innovation
system.


Gardening serves increasingly as a useful analogy for developing
regional innovation systems in many parts of the country where
practitioners are more familiar with the traditional "slash and burn"
approach to economic development than with systems theory. The new
economic development strategy outlined by Santa Fe Economic Development,
Inc. (SFEDI) provides one of the most recent examples of applying
gardening terms to cultivate tech-based growth.


The Santa Fe Plan calls on the community becoming more economically
diverse while maintaining its quality of life by nurturing the growth of
10 different industry clusters first identified in 1996: biotechnology,
publishing, information technologies, film/video production, medical
practitioners, indigenous art, light manufacturing, furniture and
furnishings, speciality agriculture and outdoor recreation equipment.
The goal is to diversify the community by reducing the dependence on the
low-wage tourism industry, without threatening the attractiveness of
Sante Fe as a tourist destination.


The city's Cluster Cultivation Program, applying the "Economic Gardening
Model," contains four basic steps: cluster identification, cluster
activation, cluster support, and cluster expansion. The plan identifies
a clear benefit to the cluster strategy as the greater likelihood that
local and regional economic development organizations are coordinating
their efforts and developing a more comprehensive approach to TBED.


Now in its first steps of implementing the plan, SFEDI is conducting
roundtable discussions for all of the industry clusters that have been
identified and is positioned to recommend specific action items for
developing each cluster. SFEDI will facilitate the meeting of cluster
members, conduct research to help the cluster define itself, and respond
to cluster priorities.


More information on the Santa Fe Plan is available at
http://www.sfedi.org/ .

 

Gus Koehler, Ph.D.

Principal

Time Structures

1545 University Ave.

Sacramento, CA 95825

916-564-8683, Fax: [phone]

Cell: 916-714-1740

www.timestructures.com

 

 
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