A thematic approach to regional economic development: Technical report for the state of Maine development strategy 2020-2029

This paper proposes a new approach to regional economic development that attempts to bring together sector and place-based strategies through the use of thematics. By connecting new measures and existing diagnostics we demonstrate how a region may identify emerging industrial themes based on their existing sectors, their labor pool, and their innovative capacity. By connecting often disparate heritage industries to new niche growing areas, a region might adapt to global and regional trends. To demonstrate this new approach, it is applied to data for the US state of Maine