What are People Saying about the Economic Development as a Profession White Paper?

Here are some of the public comments I have received about my proposal to devise a plan to advance economic development as a profession:

1. I agree we have not reached professional status in the sense you describe in your paper. Let’s learn from other fields. What was the impetus for other fields to become professions and what process did they follow? What role did national associations and universities play in the process?

2. Is there a logical way to decide when a field becomes a profession? How will we know when economic development has advanced enough to claim “full” profession standing?

3. I don’t believe economic development will ever become a profession in the sense that law and medicine are professions, but maybe our field can become a profession in the way that real estate and other business fields have become professions.

4. Don, is it worth the effort? It sounds like a whole lot of work. Before we venture down this path, we should define how this will make economic development better.

5. Your statement about “economic development being accountable to the public” scares the daylights out of me. We are having a tough enough time to being accountable to the boards and elected officials we work for. I hear what you are saying about the need to become more accountable for the public dollars we use in economic development. Maybe that is a separate issue we should tackle directly.

6. As one who has invested heavily in my own professional development over the years, I am very interested in how a new professional development process in the field will impact my creditionals as a CEcD. I sure as heck don’t want to jump through a bunch of new hoops for nothing.

7. I agree we need to become more professional in the sense that we know what really works. I think many economic development types are frustrated by their inability to have a greater impact on their local economies. Will becoming more professional solve this problem? If it does, then count me in.

8. This all sounds fine and good, but the real issue is whether those we work for will support us making the transition to full professionalhood (maybe not an acceptable term). Do you know what I mean? Our bosses already think we ARE professionals. Even worse, they think they actually know something about economic development and at times should do my job for me.

9. Lots of people think anyone can be an economic developer. Will your idea solve this problem To make this work, economic developers will need a major incentive to buy in. What’s the reward? Will my salary increase by 25% if I become a full-blown professional. Personally, I believe I am already a professional. What’s the motivation for me to want to do more?

10. I liked your earlier idea on working on leadership development in the field better than this idea about becoming a profession. Maybe if economic developers to use your term ‘solidify’ their leadership skills they will advance in a professional sense.

11. I am new to the field, as you know. You are one of the people who talked to me early on. I’m glad we talked about these issues while I was a graduate student. I am glad I have a graduate degree. I feel like I have more grounding in the field. You’re right education helps you to think about problems. From what I see, most of the training programs in economic development try to generalize practice and in the process by training people only one way to do the job, they set people up for failure. I find you have to think your way through problems to solutions. Too much monkey see, monkey do behavior in the field. If you don’t know what to do, just throw an incentive at the problem.

12.I read your ED Futures on a regular basis. I don’t work in economic development, but I am very interested in it. How does someone outside the field get into the field?

13. This topic should be a subject discussed at the September IEDC annual conference in New York. Different sides on the issue should be presented and practitioners should be given a chance to debate the issue.

14. I like where you are going with the proposal. I work in economic development in North Carolina and believe practitioners need more in-depth preparation to become professionals.

15. Perhaps the best model to examine for ideas on professionalizing economic development is in the Accounting field, where a combination of degrees and the CPA designation are used. Let's look for advice here on how to strengthen economic development.

16. How this process is approached is very important. Personally, I have concerns about too many of the "old-liners" might dominant the process and therefore stick with the status quo. We need a diverse set of views given consideration to ensure that this is reflective of our future, and not our past.

As comments are received, they will be passed along to ED Futures readers. If you have comments, please share them. Thank you.