Like many other metros, Phoenix was hit hard by the Great Recession. As the region recovers, business and community leaders made a choice: instead of continuing a consumption-based economic model that relied on real estate, retail and business attraction for growth, they decided to try a new path — one that focuses on more and better jobs in high-tech industries.
Velocity is both a public-private partnership and a strategy for reorienting the region’s economy toward its advanced industries — industries that are defined by high levels of research and development and science, technology, engineering and math workers. R&D and STEM jobs provide higher and faster-growing wages than other segments of the economy, and are seen as the region’s prime engines of regional innovation.
Graphic courtesy of Velocity’s Blueprint for Transforming Greater Phoenix into an Innovation Economy.
Velocity was developed by a group of business, community and education leaders convened by the Greater Phoenix Economic Council and the Brookings Institution with support from the Stanford Research Institute. The organization is dedicated to increasing the number of advanced industry jobs and the talent to fill those jobs in the Greater Phoenix region.
Velocity’s Blueprint for Transforming Greater Phoenix into an Innovation Economy outlines three key strategies:
- Create world-class capacity for next-generation technologies and targeted advanced industries by investing in new applied research centers, industry partnerships and programs for technical careers.
- Facilitate the formation and integration of innovation capabilities and physical environments for new and emerging firms to scale up and grow.
- Establish Greater Phoenix as a hub of global trade, connecting leading industries and entrepreneurs to growing markets abroad while also making the region a location of choice for global firms and investors.
Learn more at www.discovervelocity.com.