Economic Development Innovations: New Series Start

This is the start of a new series of articles on how to bring about greater innovation in the economic development field. This article discusses innovation and what it means to economic development. This article points to some of the leading areas where innovations are needed in economic development.

Economic development is how and where people, businesses and institutions create wealth for themselves and others. Wealth creation is essential for economies to grow. Wealth creation is not greed, contrary to what some may believe. Wealth serves both an individual and social purpose. Greed serves only selfish individual needs.

Wealth creation, and therefore economic development, has been a central concern throughout history and across continents. As history shows, innovation has been central to the ability of places, industries and classes and groups of people to successfully create wealth. We need more innovation in economic development.

What is innovation? Innovation is defined as the process of introducing something new. This can be a new principle, concept, practice, program or policy in economic development. By contrast, invention is about creating a new idea, process or or activity. Invention and innovation go hand in hand.

Economic developers concerned about increasing wealth in their communities, regions and states must confront major problems and obstacles to wealth creation. What are some of them? Money. Financial resources are needed to build existing and new programs. Competition. Economic development competition is now global and it is growing stronger. Information and knowledge. To succeed, improved information and knowledge are needed. Consensus. Leadership and citizens must agree on what need to be done. Teamwork. People must agree to work together as a team. Networks and connections. Successful programs are plugged into the right networks locally, nationally and globally to access resources needed to do the job.

Where could some innovations really help in economic development? While economic development organizations (EDO's) have made some headway in establishing global economic connections, they are still at the starting blocks in this regard. More EDO's should work together nationally and internationally to extend their reach, expand access to resources and increase their impact. Their opportunities for collaboration far exceed the instances in which they compete.

Technology is a second innovation challenge. While most EDO's have websites, they have only begun to exploit the advantages of the Internet in their work. Technology is a central challenge on all levels, including how we organize to do our work and the technological infrastructure that supports and connects us. The "agile global EDO" is needed.

Collaboration is a third challenge. Regional collaboration has increased in many metro areas and rural regions across the U.S. and abroad. Because of our traditional "silo mentality," there is still distrust of collaborative strategies in many circles. Why? Because individuals and organizations are afraid of losing power. Much work remains in truly creating "collaborative advantage" for economic development.

Human potential is a fourth innovation challenge. Yes, there is a lot of talk about workforce development and educational improvement, but most of these efforts fail to see people holistically. We greatly under-estimate and under-employ human potential in many industries, organizations and jobs. People are not just their job. They are far more. We need to recognize this larger and evolving potential and organize our world to embrace it.

A fifth challenge is moving beyond our obsession with today. Seeing the future is far from easy. It is even more difficult in the current world environment, which is plagued with risk and uncertainty. Nevertheless, economic development needs to center more of its attention on longer term concerns. We need to concern ourselves with the challenge of sustainable growth in a global context.

A sixth challenge, which also relates to the first five, is "change" itself, and how we anticipate and cope with it. Our information and knowledge base must constantly be renewed to tell us where we are and where we are headed. We must be willing to re-organize ourselves when the situation requires it. Change management must be a larger part of our economic development jobs in the future.

We need to introduce new ideas, ways of thinking, and approaches to our work to solve these six and other challenges facing economic development. Awareness is step one. This article hopes to expand awareness of how innovation can help. Don't be afraid to experiment and try new things. There is a world full of useful ideas, technologies and tools that can be readily applied to economic development. We need to use them.