A Study of the Philadelphia Knowledge Economy

A local civic organization, Greater Philadelphia First, engaged us to study the knowledge economy of the Philadelphia, Pennsylvania region and make recommendations on ways to improve its rate of growth. To structure our thinking and the interviews with local entrepreneurs, civic leaders, and others, using soft operations research techniques, we developed a framework for collecting ideas through interviews, generating our own by reflecting on the interviews, and organizing the resulting ideas. We generated a large number of useful ideas for improving the local knowledge economy. The organization sifted through the collection of ideas and selected the ones it is now advocating.