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Group Assignment Guidance
In groups of four (if possible) students are to examine four cities namely, Frankfurt, Detroit,
Mumbai and Bucharest, applying the theoretical concepts introduced in the course. Student
teams will pick a particular topic to focus on which is broadly related to competitiveness (e.g.
innovation, GDP growth, industry emergence, export, FDI, Quality of Life, etc).
Each group member will write an individual chapter (of 2,000 words) in the Group Report,
based on the analysis of an individual case study city (see Section 3 to 6 above).
The group, collaboratively, writes the Executive Summary and Introduction (Section 1 above);
Literature Review, Comparison of the different cities (Section 7 above); Discussion and
Conclusion (Section 8).
The total word length for the project is ideally 12,000 words for 4 students with each individual
student contributing 3,000 words. This does not include the executive summary and the
required Appendix that (briefly) details each student’s contribution to the completion of the
Group Report i.e. to indicate which sections each respective group member wrote.
It is expected that students will use academic and internet-based sources, ranging from journal
articles to company websites, trade association publications, annual reports, popular media
(such as The Economist and The Financial Times), etc. High quality Group Reports will apply
theoretical concepts to the data collected to construct an insightful review of the characteristics,
economy and competitiveness of the cities.
The Group Report should also compare the four cities to make observations about economic
activities in different geographical locations. To do so in a satisfactory manner, it is
advisable to formulate and subsequently answer a research question (or several research
questions). Finally, high quality Group Reports should also feature an Executive Summary (as
listed in the suggested Group Report structure above).
Each student is expected to positively engage in the group work to deliver a quality report.
Here are some tips/notes for the group report. When in doubt, please do not hesitate to ask.
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The Group Report should have the following structure (with the recommended word count):
Executive summary (about 100 to 250 words);
1. Introduction (600 words); (joint group contribution)
2. Literature review (1,600 words); (joint group contribution)
3. Analysis of Frankfurt (2,000 words); (individual student contribution)
4. Analysis of Detroit (2,000 words); (individual student contribution)
5. Analysis of Mumbai (2,000 words); (individual student contribution)
6. Analysis of Bucharest (2,000 words); (individual student contribution
7. Comparison of the four cities (1,200 words); (joint group contribution)
8. Discussion and Conclusion (600 words). (joint group contribution)
Appendix student contributions. (details of individual student contributions)
Below are some recommendations of what you can include in each section. Each chapter has a
goal, so please ensure that you meet this goal.
Executive Summary
This should briefly highlight the aim(s) of the report, key theories or frameworks used, key
findings of the report and key recommendations. The Executive Summary is not included in
the overall word count.
(1) Introduction
This goal of the introduction is to introduce the report and the research question or questions.
This is about three things: a) what you are doing, b) why you are doing it i.e. why is this issue
important in the context of competitiveness in the global economy, c) how you are doing this.
None of these are fully answered in the introduction. Instead, the introduction sets the rest of
the report up to do so. It is good practice to have the research question in this introduction
(typically near the end, just before a summary paragraph that indicates the report’s structure).
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Research Question
The research question needs to be focused, clear and concise. It needs to be time focused, it
has to be centred around any of the themes around competitiveness that we have discussed on
this module.
Your research question should be about some type of outcome. So, you could ask: “In the past
10 years, how/ to what extent/why/in what ways has X and/or Y played a role in driving
competitiveness in the global economy? How do cities of in Frankfurt, Bucharest, Mumbai,
and Detroit compare in terms of performance and why is this the case?”
X or Y could be any of the topics discussed such as innovation, GDP growth, industry
emergence, export, FDI, Quality of Life, etc.
(2) Literature Review
The goal of the literature review is to provide the reader with an understanding of the relevant
academic literature related to the key elements of your research question. This section should
set the scene for the themes which the different city chapters will be able to provide some
empirical depth and evidence.
The literature review addresses issues such as a) what is innovation, b) why is it important?
(You can also do this in the introduction to some extent.), c) what drives it? Then you discuss
the different innovation drivers/factors. You can even opt to end with a conceptual model /
figure summarizing these relationships graphically.
You need to identify a minimum of three themes relevant to your research question to review
in the literature review section.
(3) Analysis Chapters of the Global Cities
The goal of the analysis chapters is to provide relevant empirical data to show how these global
cities perform in terms of the specific research question that you are talking about. The key is
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to have a clear narrative that answers the RQ and links to the themes discussed in the Lit
Review.
For example, if your topic is innovation.
Each analysis chapter can consider a) how the city performs on innovation (e.g. through
patents, % of population in knowledge intensive jobs, etc.), and b) look at indicators for the
drivers of innovation.
(4) Comparison Chapters
The goal of the comparison chapter is to answer the research question, and explain what the
performance of the cities tells you about the research question.
The comparison chapter is about comparing the different cities. One way to do this is through
a SWOT. Again, if your topic is innovation, SWOTs can summarize which drivers/factors are
helping innovation in each of these cities (either in a single SWOT table, or separately, or just
in the text), which factors are impeding it, what the opportunities are, and what the strengths
are, etc. Feel free to just focus on strengths and weaknesses (SW) if you prefer that, or take
another approach altogether. Assuming you use a SWOT: your analysis chapters already
discussed all these matters, because you looked at how innovation and its drivers ‘score’.
Therefore, it is important to avoid repeating the entire analysis chapters in the comparison
chapter, instead focus on the main findings. So how do these cities compare? Which is the most
innovative? Which is the least innovative? What are the key drivers responsible for this?
A paragraph structure that could work for the comparison chapter is the following:
-Comparison chapter-
1. Introduction to the chapter – what it’s about, why you’re doing it, what you’re doing here
2. Strengths city A (do note that you want minimal repetition with the analysis – so summarize!)
3. Strengths city B
4. Strengths city C
5. Strengths city D
6. Weaknesses cities A through D (maybe you can manage this in just one paragraph or a few)
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7. Other considerations: opportunities
8. Other considerations: threats (maybe even spanning all cities)
9. Etc.
If you can be a bit creative here, that will really help make your text more attractive. Perhaps
there’s some interesting pattern that you found? Does your research support findings from other
studies? Or are things quite different? This is highly contextual. However, it is important to
have some sort of logical and coherent structure.
It’s likely going to be a bit different from my example in the above, but the same approach/way
of thinking will help you write an interesting report.
(5) Discussion/Conclusion
The goal of the discussion/conclusion section is to briefly summarise the findings in order to
clearly and explicitly answer your research question. You could also explain how your results
relate to the broader literature, or even to policymaking. What sort of policy does it point to,
for instance? And what are the limitations of your report? (E.g. that you don’t empirically test
the factors impacting your outcome.) Perhaps you can try to frame that in a way that suggests
avenues for future research.
(6) Appendix Student contributions
The report should be around 12,000 for a group of four students, each student should contribute
3000 words.
Grading is per student group, unless there are marked differences in quality per chapter. Please
include a small appendix for the report that includes which students wrote the different sections
of the report. This can be a table, if you like, with one or two sentences of clarification on
which student wrote what.
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Marking Criteria – Break down of marks

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