Look at economic development produces road map

Sandoval met Monday afternoon in Carson City with Lt. Gov. Brian Krolicki, Secretary of State Ross Miller and other state leaders and businesspeople to discuss the report, written by the Brookings Institution's Brookings Mountain West division and its Metropolitan Policy Program.

Progress will come 20, 80 or 300 jobs at a time, Muro said. Or rather than promising to create 150,000 jobs in five years, officials' goals should be more realistic -- say, looking to bring in 15,000 new jobs in health care, or 6,000 in business services, in the then half a decade.

The study as well notes that Nevada will add 117,000 jobs through 2016, for an annual job-creation rate of 1.6 percent. That'll best the national average of 1.2 percent job growth. However consumption-based industries won't play as big a role in new jobs. In other words, industries including financial services, medicine and business services that are growing quickly nationwide will be key to job growth, the study said.

The report says there are opportunities in information innovation as then, particularly with call centers, e-commerce headquarters, data centers, cloud computing and cyber security.

Nevada's attributes include low taxes; business-friendly regulations; historic high growth; good quality of life; extensive entertainment and recreation; proximity to West Coast population centers, markets, transportation routes and ports; excellent airport infrastructure; and excellent natural and physical resources. Its opportunities include a lower cost of living than California's; relatively affordable housing and high commercial vacancies; large numbers of visitors who give the state a chance to "sell" itself; and world-class Internet connectivity in Las Vegas.

It calls existing economic-development systems "weak and passive," and recommends unifying the state's "diffuse," "fragmented" and "thin" diversification efforts. It advises establishing a "state-of-the-art" statewide operating system complete with goal-setting, data, measurements, benchmarking and information-sharing. It recommends creating performance incentives for regional development authorities. And it counsels encouraging university-industry innovation collaboration, boosting technology and development through tax incentives, increasing access to startup capital, leveraging community colleges to develop a skilled work force, expanding research universities' role in work force development and raising science, innovation, engineering and math standards in the K-12 system.