San Diego Region Business, Government and Academic Leaders Create Regional Action Plan Amidst Increasing Global Competition

San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation (EDC), the City of San Diego and the San Diego Institute for Policy Research will launch Partnership for the Global Economy Monday, July 9 at Gen-Probe Incorporated. A media event will be held at 9:00 a.m. immediately following this first Partnership meeting. Partnership co-chairs, including San Diego Mayor Jerry Sanders, will be available for a question-and-answer session and one-on-one interviews.]

The initiative brings together local leaders to translate the findings of a recent economic study into concrete action plans for the region. The last regional Partnership in 1999 catalyzed UCSD's Rady School of Management, private sector support for Proposition A (TransNet), High Tech High, and won top awards from the U.S. Department of Commerce and CoreNet Global, the world's premier association for corporate real estate professionals.

Among the participants leading the initiative are Mayor Jerry Sanders, City of San Diego; Mayor Cheryl Cox, City of Chula Vista; Steven Francis, Chairman and Founder of the San Diego Institute for Policy Research; Hank Nordhoff, President & CEO, Gen-Probe Incorporated; and Dan Sullivan, executive vice president, QUALCOMM Inc. They will co-chair the Leadership Trust that will oversee the partnership process.

"Keeping San Diego a competitive place to do business is vitally important," said co-chair Steven Francis. "A central reason why I founded the San Diego Institute for Policy Research was to focus on ways the public sector could learn from the private sector to ensure the region's long-term prosperity."

To launch the project, Partnership for the Global Economy released a study that lays out some of the challenges and opportunities facing the region. Its findings included the following:

• San Diego's regional economy is changing rapidly. These shifts are producing benefits, but are also raising the stakes. San Diego must meet new challenges to keep pace in the global economy.
  

• San Diego's global reach has grown substantially over the last decade. The region has broadened its existing international relationships and developed new partners in more countries.
  

• San Diego's economic drivers are changing with the convergence of key industries and technologies. The region's strengths in life sciences, information technology, and advanced manufacturing are interacting in new, creative ways -- other sectors such as health services, visitor services, commercial and infrastructure construction, and professional services are becoming stronger economic drivers.
  

• San Diego's challenge is to ensure that its economic drivers have the regional and global resources necessary to compete. Public and private leaders in other regions are working together to make strategic investments, grow their talent pools, and extend their global reach.
  

• Benefiting from globalization requires hands-on regional leadership.

• San Diego's growing participation in the new global innovation economy is expanding economic opportunity for a wide range of San Diegans.
  

 Over the next two months Industry Cluster Forums will be convened to hear from CEOs of companies in the life sciences; information technology; defense, transportation, precision manufacturing; healthcare; infrastructure and construction; and hospitality industries. Industry leaders will analyze the findings of the economic study, conducted by Collaborative Economics and led by Doug Henton, its founder and president. Industry leaders will then report their recommendations back to the Leadership Trust. Action Teams will be formed around key issues, and later this year, specific Action Team plans will be rolled out.

"Partnership for the Global Economy follows an award-winning initiative led by EDC in 1999 called The Partnership for the New Economy," said Julie Meier Wright, president and CEO of San Diego Regional EDC. "The 1999 initiative sought to understand the competitiveness of San Diego for investment by key industry sectors important to the region's long-term prosperity. Today, in an increasingly global economy, we're presented with new challenges such as increased competition from other countries for human capital."

Wright noted that the 1999 Partnership framed much of EDC's policy and program agenda in recent years, including a focus on building a world-class management school, math-science education, capital formation, and infrastructure investment.