I&S has a proven track record in profiling city and regional economies and designing appropriate economic development strategies based on each region’s unique attributes.
Hawke's Bay Regional Economic Development Strategy
I&S is working on Hawke’s Bay’s regional economic development strategy under the Regional Partnership Programme. We have consulted widely with the business sector and the community (including iwi) – bringing together the different aspirations of Napier, Hastings and outlying areas such as Northern Hawke’s Bay and Central Hawke’s Bay into an overall regional vision.
A key strategy emerging from this process is building Hawke’s Bay as an internationally recognised regional centre of food growing and processing excellence.
Wellington’s cluster development
I&S has co-directed and is responsible for designing and successfully operating the Wellington Business Clusters project. Two of Wellington’s clusters have just broken into new export markets, providing new opportunities for many of their small business members.The restructuring and recent success of the Wellington regional economy is due largely to the focus on building specialised export-focused clusters that have created high quality employment opportunities and fresh growth.
Regional innovation system
Recent work has focused on developing Wellington’s Cluster Co-chair forum and moving it towards a full Strategic Partnership for Economic Development.This is part of a process of aligning all key stakeholders in a regional economy around an agenda of creating mutually supportive educational research, development and business development services to:
- drive innovation
- remove blockages
- harness broader community support.
Specialised ‘spinoffs’
We have recently being involved in the development work for Media Lab South Pacific, a science, technology and incubation park initiative that provides a research and development base to help drive innovation for Wellington’s ICT clusters.
International networks and benchmarking
We have established working networks with a number of international agencies, organisations and individuals so we can draw on best practice in economic development evaluation and strategy design.
We also have relationships with cities such as Tucson, Arizona and Canberra that are leaders in civic-led economic development. These relationships have enabled us to organise joint benchmarking exercises including one recently facilitated by I&S using experts from the Greater Tuscon Economic Council.
Dunedin
I&S has been involved in a number of economic development projects in Dunedin City, including working with the engineering tooling and biotechnology clusters.We have had extensive contact with DCC economic development staff and other leading businesses and educational institutions in the region over a number of years.
Capability assessments
I&S has conducted capability assessment projects aimed at determining the capacity and capability of sectors or industries, both quantitatively and qualitatively. By understanding the size and issues surrounding specific sectors, I&S has developed strategies and actions for improving the growth within these sectors.
Projects include:
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NZ optics industry |
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NZ multimedia industry |
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NZ film industry |
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Tool-making companies in Dunedin |
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Software companies in Wellington |
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Furniture and forestry industry in Hawke’s Bay |
Cluster classification and costing research
I&S has worked with Industry New Zealand to develop a methodology for classifying the development stages of New Zealand’s clusters – developing a tool to establish easily where each cluster is in the cluster “development lifecycle” and identify the associated activity costs.Facilitating clusters
As experienced cluster facilitators, we recognise that the role of an independent, neutral facilitator is critical to the success of building strongly performing clusters. I&S facilitators play a cornerstone role in getting early action under way in search of confidence-building “early wins”.
I&S also leads Hawke’s Bay’s capability-building programme and helps select, recruit and train cluster facilitators for the Hawke’s Bay region.