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.