Industry Clusters

Blount County's Industry Clusters have been developed through a local and regional evaluation process that looks at location quotient, environmental impact, labor cost, industry trends, community accessibility, and regulatory issues.   During the evaluation process the regional partners identified the Area as the Innovation Valley and have begun to brand the region using this name.  The results of the cluster analysis for Blount County and the region were:

Manufacturing	Corporate Services
Automotive	Headquarters
Medical Devices	Accounting
Watercraft	Finance
Communication equipment	Telecommunications
Aluminum production
Home appliance components
Technology	Collaboration
Nanotechnology	Universities
Instrumentation	Venture Capitalists
Nuclear Energy	Military
Environmental	Energy Research
Alternative Fuels
Airport Security
Bio-Hazard Detection

Target Areas of Communication

United States:	Europe:	Asia:
Atlanta	England (Dorset-Poole, West Midlands, Northeast)	Japan (Nagoya, Yokohama, Tokyo)
Chicago	France (Normandy, LaManche)	India
New York	Germany (Frankfurt, Berlin, Vichy)	China (Sujin City)
Dallas, Texas
Southern California
Washington D.C.