In 2002, Monitor Group and the Harvard Business School’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness completed a high-profile engagement for the Council on Competitiveness which entailed the study of fifteen industry clusters in five U.S. regions. The Clusters of Innovation Initiative was launched in order to gain a better understanding of how regional economies develop, how clusters form and gain competitiveness, and how innovative capacity is built. The Initiative offered recommendations for government, universities, the private sector, and other regional institutions. The Initiative examined studied five regions around the country: Atlanta, Pittsburgh, the Research Triangle, San Diego, and Wichita. These regions were selected to provide a diversity of size, geography, economic maturity, and economic composition. The regions were similar enough to allow interesting comparisons, yet diverse enough to encompass a wide variety of challenges and opportunities in regional economic development. Initiative outcomes include:

• Creation of the largest data set on regional cluster competitiveness, which provides a unique source of information for business, government and academia;
  
• Creation of well-integrated, impactful data documents for business and government leaders which articulates a clear action agenda;
  
• Initiation of a highly intensive public dialogue on the issues between business, government and academia leaders, supported by cutting edge analysis;
  
• Institutionalization of the analysis process with potential roll over to other states;
  
• The decision by the National Governors Association to make cluster competitiveness a part of its national agenda;
  
• Active dialogue with regional and federal government officials to incorporate cluster competitiveness into their planning efforts; and,
  
• Use of the regional reports for the purposes of economic strategy development, change management, and business retention recruitment.