Best Practices

Everybody wants to know which economic development organizations are doing "best practice" work in particular economic development functions or activities. Organizations hire consultants like me to do identify what the "best" are doing. Save your money if you are looking for absolute, irrefutable examples of best practice in economic development. There are none. Now, can you learn from other organization's experience? Absolutely, but please don't look for the perfect program that will solve all of your problems. It doesn't exist. I say instead: work on perfecting your own programs through better monitoring, research and planned improvements. Invest in technology, especially the Internet, to support appropriate aspects of your work.

Economic development is a "work in progress." I think we are getting better at what we do, but we are a long way from knowing how to set forth standards that any organization can adopt and follow and receive predictable results. In fact, we have done virtually no best practice benchmarking research that shows if you do x, then y will occur. At best, our best practice work is case study-based, and in some instances looks at a larger population or organizations, operating environments, and performance outcomes. That is what we need. Somebody needs to conduct this research. It will help all of us.

Everyone would be better served in the field if we talked about appropriate or applicable practices. Let's work on creating appropriate expectations about what we do. I find too much hype about best practices, and when I look beneath the surface I usually find a weak unsubstantiated self-claim to fame. That is not best practice. We need help in many areas of economic development practice. Four key areas come to mind where we should spend more attention: industry clusters; technological innovation; marketing; and incentives.

If you are new to the best practice game, you may want to nose around this website for some useful ideas. Go here. This is a database created by the UN on sustainable development best practices worldwide. It contains several best practice solutions for economic development.

We have more to say on this topic. Stay tuned.