Current Trends in Economic Development
Current Trends in Economic Development No matter the size of the community or municipality, most community
leaders and economic development practitioners are interested in
building a strong, vibrant local community. Businesses and the jobs
they create are critical components of strong economies. Supporting the
retention and expansion of local businesses is fundamental to achieving
community sustainablility and growth. Economic development strategies such as business recruitments,
investement attraction, strategic alliances and partnerships,
entrepreneurship, workforce development, downtown revitalization,
tourism development, updating the official municipal plan and creating
infrastructure capacity for growth, ect. - are part of the community
economic development "tool kit". Depending on the size of a community,
most all of these techniques for economic development should be
undertaken as integral parts of an overall economic development strategy
plan. During the past number of years, an increasing number of
progressive municipalities have begun to focus on providing greater
support to their existing business sector. This is known as "business
retention and expansion". A variety of business visitation models have
been implemented in an attempt to understand the needs and expections of
local businesses and thereby growing the local economy by developing
and implementing actions to support the retention and growth of existing
businesses. No longer do community leaders have to struggle over developing their
own business survey forms and trying to figure out data collected from
the business community in rudimentary efforts to initiate a business
retention and expansion program. The process is much easier now and
much more hight tech! Contact Saskatchewan South East Enterprise Region
inc. (SSEER) at 306 - 636 - 6982 to learn more about business retention
and expansion services available, incluing the E-Sychronist technology.