User:CMCwdawson/Oregon business plan

The Oregon Business Plan, launched in 2002, is an ongoing collaborative effort between Oregon’s business community and its elected leaders to achieve greater economic growth and prosperity across all of Oregon's regions. There are three components to this goal: 1) add 25,000 net new jobs per year, 2) raise per capita income aove the national average by 2020 (it is now 91 percent of that benchmark), and 3) Reduce the percentage of Oregonians living in poverty from 14 percent now to less than 10 percent by 2020. .

Oregon Business Plan participants believe that the key to Oregon's overall economic growth and success is the success of what it calls traded-sector industries. These are industies that sell their services and products mainly outside the state. They drive the Oregon economy by bringing in fresh dollars that recirculate in local economies through payrolls, employee spending in the local economy, purchases from local vendors, and tax revenues that fund critical public services like education. Businesses in these industries, both big and small, tend to cluster based on access to shared resources, talent, suppliers, and other factors.

The strategic focus of the Oregon Business Plan is to promote conditions critical to the success of traded-sector industries. These are formulated as the 4Ps for Prosperity: - People: A talented work force - Productivity: Quality infrastructure, resource utilization, and competitive regulations and business costs - Place: A high quality of life that attracts and retains talented people - Pioneering Innovation: A culture of research, commercialization and innovation in product and process design.

The main work of the Oregon Business Plan is to research and propose public sector policies and investments to achieve the conditions characterized by the 4Ps. Business Plan recommendations are made in the form of proposed initiatives. Currently in 2013, the Business Plan has six initiatives to redesign public services (for example, the state's education system) and nine initiatives to create jobs (for example, building a replacement bridge where Interstate 5 crosses the Columbia River between Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington.

The Oregon Business Plan hosts an annual day-long Leadership Summit each December in Portland which typically attracts as many as 1,000 participants and featurs speakers and panels that include business leaders, the Governor, Oregon's two U.S. senators, many state legislators, and city and county elected officials.

Development of The Oregon Business Plan is guided by a steering committee, which includes leaders from businesses, business associations, and public agencies with responsibility for Oregon's economic progress. The Oregon Business Council staffs the year-round work of the Oregon Business Plan and the Leadership Summit in December.

Reference: http://www.oregonbusinessplan.org