COMPASS - Competitive Alternatives for Sustainable Private Sector Investments in the Baltic Sea Region

Inward investment is the main driving force for regional development, but the question, how to best attract these investments, still remains. Therefore it is crucial to identify growth industries and industrial clustering patterns in the regions and to evaluate business location decisions.

As a joint initiative of economic and business development agencies in Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden COMPASS concentrated on developing hands-on knowledge and supporting IT tools for inward investment promotion. Areas of research included the development of a practical approach to Cluster Analysis, the evaluation of site selection factors for growth industries, the importance of cost competitiveness in international facility location projects as well as benchmarking of potential investment sites in the participating countries.

COMPASS started with an evaluation of existing industrial clusters and their potential for further development. As a result local economic investors can easily produce their own cluster analysis.

To form the basis for sustainable private sector investments COMPASS identified 280 site selection factor studies for the Food Industry, Media Industry, Metal Industry, Logistics, Health Care, Call Center, and Shared Service Centers. In addition a process for comparison of business cost between different regions, IT tools to support cost comparison studies and a process to track potential investors were developed.

To strengthen the competitiveness an IT-tool in the form of a database for six different cluster analysis areas, including, health care cluster, forestry-based cluster or media and IT cluster and regional cluster analysis for Kotka (Finland), Luebeck (Germany), Naestved (Denmark) and Skurup/SÖSK (Sweden) regions were produced. All cluster analysis has the same approach so the results can be compared. Common IT supported electronic fact books for local and regional economic development and an evaluation and analysis of enterprise-level investment flows in the Baltic Sea region using a geo information system were also produced.

The results of the project are practical tools, which help public authorities to identify concrete investment possibilities in regions and make cities more attractive for the business community.