Why are some regions more prosperous than others? Certainly macro-economic policies are important contributors, but these policies often do not explain the differences in prosperity across regions. Some regions are more successful than others because important drivers of competitiveness and prosperity are rooted in a particular location, and public and private sector leaders in these regions have learned how to turn these drivers to their advantage.

We have developed two survey tools that allow leaders to understand two important drivers of competitiveness: the quality of the business environment and entrepreneurship:

• Monitor’s Executive Insight Survey asks numerous questions about a region’s micro-economic business environment. It allows us to collect various measures relating to the quality of the micro-economic business environment of regions and clusters around the world.(click here for a sample Executive Insight Survey output):
• Monitor’s Entrepreneurship Benchmarking Survey identifies the most important entrepreneurship policies and drivers that help explain entrepreneurial performance. The survey measures such drivers as the availability of equity capital, attitudes towards risk and reward, quality of business and government support services for start-ups, and nature of cultural attitudes towards entrepreneurship

Both of these surveys can be disseminated over the internet, and by collecting responses over time, we are building a sizeable comparative database that can be used to benchmark regions. Because responses to the survey typically come in a matter of days after dissemination, the surveys enable clients to quickly understand the environmental conditions for entrepreneurship or innovation in a region and / or cluster, compare those conditions to peer regions already in our datasets, and identify the main strengths and weaknesses of the region / cluster relating specifically to innovation or entrepreneurship.

These surveys can also be bundled with other data – both proprietary and publicly available – to provide a more comprehensive profile of the situation in a region. Our Entrepeneurship Profile incorporates information from the Benchmarking survey while also helping regions understand their unique drivers of entrepreneurship and its role in overall economic growth. (click here for a sample Entrepeneurship Profile)