ED Profession

I’m amazed how little is written about what goes on at the state and local levels.

Most of us work in a community or at the state level and our daily professional lives are a lot more complicated than simply “creating jobs/clusters”, “preparing knowledge-based workers” or “developing disruptive entrepreneurs”. OK–there is the usual flood of blogs describing new policy issues, incredibly brilliant programs, and cutting-edge economic development strategies. But there is precious little about what it is like to work in sub-state economic development. There is seldom anyone who writes about how things get done locally and how a local economic developer can function effectively. That is what this issue is about.

The book jacket describes Joel Kotkin’s the New Class Conflict as a “call to arms and a unique piece of analysis about the possible evolution of our society into an increasingly quasi-feudal order”. The image of Kotkin as Martin Luther posting his famous 95 Theses came to my mind Using metaphors gleaned from the medieval world, Kotkin, the iconoclastic but extraordinarily insightful master of Curmudgeons, describes a new ruling class he believes dominate much of contemporary America. What has this got to do with economic development? Plenty! Kotkin’s description/critique of this New Class and its devastating consequences to our society and economy delivers a powerful blow to several prominent economic development strategies. Anyone in economic development can’t ignore this book–no more than the Pope could ignore the Protestant Reformation.

As an economic developer you’re not supposed to do it–pick winners, that is! Can’t really be done, we’re told–just like timing the stock market. This advice is a truism and like all truisms, it’s true up to a point. No doubt it is correct that one cannot consistently pick winners and avoid losers.  There’s one problem […]