As an international business development player, Tucson has an advantage in Global Advantage.

"Very few cities smaller or larger have had the recent, measurable success that we’ve had in capturing foreign direct investment," said Joe Snell, president and CEO of Tucson Regional Economic Opportunities Inc. (TREO).

The trade publication Expansion Management named Pima County the No. 1 mid-size county in terms of recruitment and attraction of companies.

"We’ve become more sophisticated about it," Snell said. "We are positioned as good as anyone in the west and specifically Arizona to do business on an international basis. And we’re just now getting aggressive with it."

Global Advantage is a program of the University of Arizona Office of Economic Development. It has created a network of cities and regions committed to working collaboratively to enhance mutual technology-based economic development.

As a result of the program, there are new markets, enhanced supply chains, joint research projects, greater opportunities for technology development and commercialization.

"As part of TREO’s blueprint created a year and a half ago, we identified that we needed to tackle how we dealt with international development, whether it be trade, foreign direct investments, research relationship investments or tourism. And we needed to do it comprehensively and under one umbrella," Snell said. "I was considering developing a new department in TREO for international work when I went on a trip with Global Advantage and saw they had a very good market presence already and some well established relationships."

So a move was made to bring different entities to the table such as the Tucson Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce, TREO, Tucson Airport Authority and the UA to modify Global Advantage to have more of a community play.

The group laid out the opportunities in those four areas and found regions in which all four areas were interested.

"That’s how we came up with the targeted countries," Snell said. "It is kind of like if each of us had a colored dot and we put all our dots on a map these are the areas that had all the colors. It allows us to tackle the markets strategically."

"The point is, what we are building is being recognized as a best practice by industry and economic developers alike," said John Grabo, director of marketing and international programs at the University of Arizona Science and Technology Park. "Our region-wide collaboration on this topic is really what, I think, is starting to make things hum."

Using Germany as an example, the UA has research interests there, TREO is targeting solar companies and there is a lot of tourism impact from Germany.

"All of that activity translates into economic impact for southern Arizona," Grabo said.

"It makes sense for all of us to go together, manage our resources and really sell Tucson from a variety of fronts," Snell said. "We are offering Tucson to them with one unified voice."

Partner cities of Global Advantage are Ottawa, Canada; Berlin, Germany; Manchester, England; and Guadalajara, Mexico.

"This is a global ball game," Snell said. "We have an opportunity to be an economic juggernaut as it relates to international business development and I think we’re on the doorstep of making that happen."

Contact reporter Joe Pangburn at jpangburn@azbiz.com or (520) 295-4259.