Competitiveness Agenda
Step 3 of the Michigan Turnaround Plan calls for getting Michigan competitive with other states and nations. Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM) defines “competitive” as having a cost/value balance as strong as the “Top Ten” states for job, economic and personal income growth. This approach recognizes the need to simultaneously build the state’s core competencies and assets (i.e., value) and ensure competitive costs.
BLM addresses the need for “competitiveness” by basing the Michigan Turnaround Plan, the strategy that guides all our work, heavily on annual benchmarking we conduct of Michigan’s economic competitiveness relative to other states and nations. The assessment compares Michigan’s performance on a broad number of output (e.g., GDP growth) and input (e.g., labor cost) metrics. “Traditional,” “new economy,” “global,” and “Top Ten” benchmark states and/or nations are used to provide multiple reference points to evaluate the state’s performance.
