February 14, 2020
Greater Portland Inc was featured in a Brookings Metro piece on the importance of regional collaboration in attracting foreign direct investment. The article emphasizes a key point: scale matters in global competitiveness efforts, and a region carries a lot more weight than a single city.
"Investors rarely pay attention to city borders," the piece says. "Global competition should incentivize a region’s stakeholders to work together and project a common identity to the outside business community."
Brookings highlights Greater Portland Inc and our work with our partners as an example of successful regional collaboration: "Economic development organizations oftentimes establish steering committees on FDI and exports to orient efforts in various markets. At Greater Portland Inc., more than 70 public entities and private investors across seven counties support the regional governance integration. On sales missions, these organizations crosspollinate: Business Oregon, the tourism agency, the Portland Business Alliance, the U.S. Commercial Service, and the Port of Portland align priority markets to enhance business and visitor attraction."
Read the full story here.
Greater Portland Inc is part of the Global Cities Initiative, a project of the Brookings Institution and JPMorgan Chase aimed at helping the leaders of metropolitan America strengthen their regional economies by becoming more competitive in the global marketplace. The project seeks to catalyze a shift in economic policy and practice to position metro areas for high-quality growth and better jobs for more workers.