Adapting to the future: learning from the Harvard Business School U.S. Competitiveness Project.

• Author: Gochnour, Natalie
• Position: Economic Insight

I recently attended Sen. Mike Lee's Utah Solutions Summit. The focus was Utah's workforce and economy. The program included a who's who of education, business and economic leaders, as well as keynote presentations by Indiana Governor and Donald Trump running mate Mike Pence, and former presidential candidate Carly Fiorina. I left the conference thinking about the Utah economy and Utah's future, and I want to share a few thoughts.

Whenever we engage in policy discussions in Utah, we compare our performance to that of the nation. Sometimes we do better, sometimes we do worse, but we appropriately use our nation as a tracking device to identify where we are and where we are headed.

My colleague at the Utah Department of Workforce Services, Carrie Mayne, shared data on Utah and U.S. job growth and unemployment. Interestingly, while the Utah economy does better, the peaks and troughs in our economic performance match almost exactly those of the nation. Utah's economy is inextricably linked to national economic performance.

At the Summit I had the opportunity to introduce the audience to the Harvard Business School's U.S. Competitiveness Project. It is a research-led effort to understand the ability of firms operating in the United States to compete successfully in the world economy and support high and rising living standards for Americans. I think the project is important to the Utah economy because of the strong connection between Utah and the national economic performance.

A hallmark of the U.S. Competitiveness Project is a survey on U.S. competitiveness. The Harvard Business School drew a representative sample from an alumni network of over 81,000 graduates. They then asked alumni to assess U.S. competitiveness compared to other advanced economies. The conclusions yielded several fascinating results.

First, let's be honest--we live in the greatest country in the world. We have so much to be grateful for. American universities, innovation, entrepreneurship and legal framework are the envy of the world.

But there's an ugly underbelly we need to discuss: Many of the most important components of global competiveness are deteriorating in this country. And the sad reality is that most of these components reside in the hands of government.

In the survey the Harvard Business School divided economic components into four quadrants: strong and improving, strong and deteriorating, weak and improving, and weak and deteriorating. The deteriorating...