Still, the nonprofit Economy League, whose roots stretch to 1909, wants to create some urgency over long-standing problems such as low educational attainment, aging roads and rails, and lagging progress on business formation.
"If our companies aren't able to compete in the global marketplace, if our talent base isn't globally competitive with other regions, we run the risk of falling behind," said Steven T. Wray, executive director of the Economy League. "We need to be doing those things that put us ahead of the game, that allow us to anticipate the change that is happening."
The germ for it all emerged from the region's short-lived effort in 2006 to bid on the 2016 Olympic Games. If you remember, the knock wasn't that the city had a negative image - it had no image at all in the international Olympic community, an American city indistinguishable from so many others. (Who's hosting in 2016? Rio de Janeiro.)
That got board members of the Economy League, including now-chairman Rick Altman, thinking about why Philadelphia isn't the type of region the spotlight seeks out on the world stage. What followed was an exploration of what it means to be world class - a region that's not competing with Boston, New York, and Washington, but Beijing, London, and Paris for jobs, talent, and capital.
Starting in 2009, the Economy League organized 26 events for its World Class Greater Philadelphia effort that attracted and involved more than 1,000 leaders from the business and nonprofit worlds, government, labor, and community groups.
Some were quite thought-provoking, such as one in September 2009 that featured Saskia Sassen, a sociologist who urged the audience to think of regions as networks to connect with a wider world.
