Our Editorial Perspective

The Journal of Applied Research will over time include a variety of features and columns, including at least an annual edition composed of peer-reviewed academic articles, guest columns, letters to the editor, and even chats attached to its features. The Journal will be exclusively online and will be available to the membership of C2ER and affiliated entities. The core of the new and revamped Journal will be two reviews, published each month, under the byline “In the Trenches”. “In the Trenches” is clearly our “above the fold” cornerstone around which the Journal will flow. Without apology,” In the Trenches” represents the Editor’s take on the subject matter discussed and in no way reflects the policy or position of C2ER, its affiliates, staff or membership. It is consciously intended to stimulate discussion, increase awareness of key concepts and issues, and offer a hopefully respectful and informed perspective and critique useful (but certainly not always accepted) to the membership.

The central intention of the Journal and its component features, especially “In the Trenches” is to transfer knowledge, increase awareness and offer a perspective on the critical issues and concepts of importance to the profession of economic development. Its audience is the practitioner, the economic developer in the trenches. Motivating our approach is our perception there exist a substantial and profound gap between several very important elements of the profession: the academic, university-based research community, the policy think tanks and federal and state research institutes — and the economic developer tirelessly (more or less) working in the vineyard s of the communities and jurisdictions throughout the nation.

It is our perception, perhaps incorrect of course, that communication and knowledge transfer between these elements is, well, imperfect. At the very least, community-based professionals do not enjoy the unrestricted time it takes to read and digest the incredible variety of articles, books, policy proposals, and vision statements that pour from national and state universities, think tanks and research institutes. No matter how valuable this information might be, it is largely unknown to the practitioner and to the extent it is known by them is only intermittently consumed. To be fair, this “failure to communicate” frequently is triggered by several issues which becloud the information. First, forgive us for saying that much of academic research does not seem to have the practitioner in mind. The academic literature dominated by pervasive jargon, high brow terms and concepts without obvious meaning and context to those of us outside academia, and obscure and seemingly endless methodologies and statistics, not to mention logical and mathematical models which defy description and most likely relevance. There is, frankly, a lot to wade through.

Likewise with research institutes and think tanks. Frequently, they use the same jargon and high brow concepts found in academia, but compound that problem with the reality that for the most part these institutions are far from neutral players in the policy system. They are advocates and opponents of one or another ideology or program/policy. After all, their primary purpose, I suspect, is to develop and affect the making of public policy by our national and state executives and legislatures. The practitioner is not their front row audience. Unsurprisingly, much of this literature, however useful and important, does not penetrate the economic developer in the trenches. To be useful to those in the field, the assumptions and ideological biases must be acknowledged and some translation as to how these proposed policies and programs might be valuable and a critique of their applicability seems in order.

Accordingly, “In the Trenches” will monitor key economic development journals and Think Tank/ Research Institutes for articles and reviews which are useful to practitioners across the nation. Usually, we suspect, we will embrace a theme, such as cluster strategy, each month and summarize its central features, and critique the theme and offer a perspective as to its use and relevance to the economic developer in the trenches. No doubt this will be inherently unsatisfying to both academia and research institutes, but as far as our proposed audience is concerned, we hope it is valuable and invite your comments and feedback. We will also offer a rebuttal to those we critique. Attached to each “In the Trenches” review, we shall make available the opportunity to “chat” (civility and propriety of course assumed) so if anyone is actually interested, they can express themselves and a dialogue can follow.