Partnership Examples

Next Gen Sector Partnerships are active in 20 states across the country. Each partnership is customized to the unique conditions of their regions and target industries, however they all share a common DNA. Next Gen Sector Partnerships are committed to fostering authentic and sustained industry leadership, coordinating across public partners in education, workforce and economic development, and harnessing the capacity of multiple public and private partners to tackle issues that impact the long-term health and vitality of the region's economy and community.

Read more below about what Next Gen Sector Partnerships look like on the ground.

National Benchmarking Initiative

In 2020-2022, the Institute for Networked Communities set out to document the life cycle of nine leading Next Gen Partnerships across the country in a National Benchmarking Project. This project was not an evaluation; rather, it was an assessment of the common factors that make these partnerships work. The profiles in this compendium identify each region's motivations for launch, mechanisms for change, moments of transformation, measurable results, major ingredients for success, and plans for the future. While the profiles follow the same outline, the stories are quite distinct, demonstrative of unique starting places and varying strengths and weaknesses along the way.

Together these nine regions demonstrate that this work is that of constant cultivation and continuous improvement. Without exception, each region demonstrated the critical role of business and industry leading from the center, as well as almost dogged maintenance of coordinated responses and solutions from public and community-based partners. Read the initial 2021 Benchmarking report here and the 2022 issue here.