The Council on Competitiveness is a Washington, DC-based nonprofit of CEOs, university presidents and labor leaders.

 Michael Porter is a member of the Council’s Executive Committee and has guided cluster studies of these five regions in the US – San Diego, Wichita, Research Triangle, Pittsburgh, and Atlanta.

The National Governors Association (NGA) began a partnership with the Council late last year and co-sponsored a conference “National Clusters of Innovation” in Washington, DC in December 2001.

The NGA’s Center for Best Practices is holding Regional Competitiveness Forums in 2002 in Denver and Atlanta.

Arizona, Connecticut, Oregon and Wisconsin are among states that have launched cluster initiatives.

The Harvard Cluster Mapping Project provides a search tool to help states identify their statewide or regional clusters.  The Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at the Harvard Business School hosts the search tool on its web site at www.isc.hbs.edu