What works in regional economic development: learning from international best practice

To achieve even the UK national average on a number of productivity and economic participation indicators the North East England region will have to make a significant economic step change in the near future. STUDY AIMS AND APPROACH In March 2006, One North East commissioned a partnership of CURDS (Newcastle University) and GHK Consulting to identify and develop a series of international case studies of best practice in regional economic development. The aim was to identify economic development interventions that have brought about required step change within formerly lagging regions across the world and to consider potential learning (themes and recommendations) as to ‘what works in regional economic development’. The research approach entailed two distinct phases. Phase 1 entailed statistical benchmarking of regions across Europe, North America and Australia; the shortlisting, and subsequent development, of a selection of international Regional Case Studies; and the distillation of a set of good practice Common Themes through a Workshop process and International Peer Review. Phase Two undertook a day Workshop with regional stakeholders at which the Common Themes were applied directly to the economic context of North East England in order to develop recommendations. In total, eight regional case studies were developed of regions with better than average performance on one or more international indicators of economic performance, a regional economic context relevant to the historical experience of North East England, interventions of high relevance to the objectives of the draft 2006 Regional Economic Strategy and, ultimately, intervention programmes that it was expected North East England ‘could do’