Using Data to Foster International Trade, Foreign Direct Investment, and Collaborations Among Metropolitan Areas

The City of San Antonio has been engaged in a six-year process to identify opportunities in foreign markets for international trade, foreign direct investment, and institutional collaborations. The effort was lead by The Brookings Institution, and with the support of JPMorgan Chase, the final portion of the process, called the Global Cities Initiative, was recently completed. In this stage of the process, each of the nine cities involved in the process selected an industry or two on which to focus their efforts in determining these global opportunities. In the case of San Antonio, our specific focus was on the cybersecurity industry. The culmination of the work was the release of the report by The Brookings Institution, Six Steps for Metro Areas to Prioritize Global Markets.

The six steps include:

1. Organize for action
2. Select a priority specialization
3. Set the goal
4. Measure global market opportunity within the specialization
5. Factor in market accessibility
6. Combine and synthesize data

As they are listed, these steps are rather generic and do not say much. I was fortunate and honored to be a part of the San Antonio team working on the project, so I can say with first-hand knowledge, it is quite a thorough process that has educated and enriched the knowledge of the communities involved about the opportunities in cities around the world for particular industries. I am sure it can do the same for other cities that want to engage in the process. If you want to get into the detail, I highly recommend you read through the report authored by Max Bouchet, Marek Gootman, and Joseph Parilla of The Brookings Institution. It can be found here.