Welcome to the Economic Development Futures (EDF) Blog.

This is an online journal where you can find interesting ideas and insights about the evolution of economic development practice and policy across the United States and globally.

What is "economic development?" Economic development, in simple terms, is how and where people, businesses and institutions create wealth.

What is wealth? Traditional economics defines wealth in financial and material terms. Per capita personal income is a traditional yardstick for measuring wealth creation for people. Profitability and return on investment are traditional yardsticks for measuring wealth creation by businesses. Because of its institutional roots and influences, economic development recognizes quality of life, community assets and other measures of the "intangible" forms of wealth.

With the growth of services and experiences (entertainment for one) in our economy, markets for "intangibles" have overtaken markets for goods. That doesn't mean that goods don't matter. It simply means that human evolution has set us on a course to understand and embrace our "non-material" aspects as human beings. That's why we are seeing increased attention to knowledge, emotional intelligence, ethics, human consciousness and spirituality in all aspects of our lives, including the workplace.

How is wealth created? It is created by economic activities that generate more value than they destroy. Net value creation is a function of productivity, that is leveraging higher returns on economic assets (both tangible and intangible). In today's economy, knowledge and technology are the two principal drivers for wealth creation because they provide the greatest leverage for economic growth.

Many people created a great deal of wealth for themselves in the 1990s by creating and applying knowledge and technology related to the Internet and other technology-based industries. We created too much economic capacity too rapidly, causing our economy to spin out of control, and eventually fall downward. Now, many people are taking a severe financial beating as we strive for a new balance.

Where is wealth created? It is created just about everywhere, but some places are more successful as wealth-generating locations than others. While all economic activities have a local basis, wealth generation is increasingly global in its origins and impacts. Those places with the greatest mastery of knowledge and technology application skills are now the leading wealth generators for themselves and other places worldwide. Superior ongoing learning capacity is another way to describe this ability.

Places across the globe belong to various "wealth-generating networks," which suggests that places should learn to work together in developing common opportunities that serve these networks. There are no economic islands in the world today. The role of economic development strategy is to help places stay connected to existing wealth-creating networks and build connections to new ones. Places suffering the greatest economic hardship today are "by-passed" and "disconnected" places. The secret is to stay connected to what is alive and gives new "economic life."

People factor heavily into any "economic development equation" you might find across the world. This is true in North America, Asia, Europe, or anywhere else we might look. Human creativity, innovation, intelligence, skill, passion, motivation and yes even hard work, give rise to new job and wealth creation across the planet. These are the things that create "work" in society and therefore jobs for people. Jobs are nothing more than how we "bundle" work. Businesses and people are constantly re-bundling work to remain aligned with changing human and economic requirements. Historically, economic developers have counted the jobs they have created or retained as though they were static things with permanence. In the future, economic developers will count the amount of value that is created and retained in their communities and they will see jobs as a vehicle to create and deliver value. We are on the cusp of this new development.

Economic development emulates and follows the human development process. It reflects our evolutionary biology, culture, values and beliefs, interactions and relationships, individual and collective thought patterns, our heart's desires and every other aspect of what it means to be human. This tells me that the future will see a new brand of economic development: "humanistic" economic development, which gives rightful credit to our human potential as the force behind economic growth.

We are in store for some big changes in economic development with these trends and ideas in mind. Stay tuned to this blog to follow our thinking about what we see happening.

Your comments and questions are welcome. Please contact Don Iannone, Chief Blogmaster, by email at: dtia@ix.netcom.com, or call us at: 440-449-0753. You can find us on the web at: www.don-iannone.com.