Industrial policy has made a come-back. Governments around the world are more actively targeting specific sectors and technologies given global trade and supply-chain reconfigurations, national strategic autonomy and security, the green transition, and more recently, defence. National priority sectors rely on firms, workers and other capabilities distributed across places. Place-based industrial policy (PBIP) thus proactively targets specific sectors based on regional considerations, goals and actions. Place-based approaches have the potential to more effectively deliver national industrial policy by crowding-in private investment and aligning related policy actions with regional development, skills policies and local planning. This paper proposes a place diagnostic toolkit and a roadmap for national and local authorities to jointly inform sectoral and place choices to co-design industrial strategies. The place diagnostics helps to assess what each place or territory can credibly do efficiently, how this connects with other sectors and regions, and which policy levers are worth pulling where.
