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Challenge Seattle
Challenge Seattle
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INITIATIVE
Greater Seattle Partners:A Public-Private Partnership for Economic Development
Challenge Seattle partnered with public- and private- sector leaders to establish Greater Seattle Partners: a groundbreaking partnership to advance economic growth and competitiveness for the Puget Sound region.
The Challenge
In an increasingly competitive global economy, we, along with other leaders in our community, saw a need for the Puget Sound region to solidify our economic competitiveness. We needed to grow economic prosperity throughout the entire region, enhance trade promotion, attract capital in innovative industries, and stabilize the economy to ensure our region could thrive through good and challenging economic times.
Our Focus
Following an exhaustive study of the nation’s “best in class” Economic Development organizations conducted by the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), a small group of our leaders, including Challenge Seattle, visited three such organizations to see their work firsthand. We found that the “best-in-class” organizations around the country are regional, led by high-caliber economic development professionals, and have a culture and mindset focused on acting and thinking regionally, with robust private sector leadership, engagement, and funding.
Following this model of success, we sought to develop our own “best-in-class” organization, setting a bold vision for Seattle’s future that emphasized collaboration among the public and private sectors in our region to maximize strategic economic development and trade. By working together as one region, we saw an opportunity to make us more competitive, resilient, prosperous, and successful in trade and economic development.
Our Work
After two years of development, in 2018 Greater Seattle Partners (GSP) launched as the first public/private economic development organization to serve our entire region. GSP’s mandate is to attract investment, promote international trade, and grow existing industry by marketing the Puget Sound region, recruiting targeted business and trade focused on the region’s assets, using sophisticated data and analytics to tell region’s competitive story, and engaging leadership and funding from both the public and private sectors. GSP is off and running as an independent organization, taking our region’s economic development efforts to a new level. Click below to learn more and connect with Greater Seattle partners.
