It's a jungle out there...
While America's hometowns suffer from the loss of local manufacturing and related employment, local and state economic development teams duke it with their equal rivals to entice new business to the home turf. A smorgasbord of incentives plus statistics aplenty are laid out to temp the pursued. The few victors are rewarded with the possibility of future economic growth and stability. The unsuccessful go home empty handed.
The teams are many but the game plan is usually predictable: (1) Identify local strengths i.e. work force attributes, transportation networks, available commercial real estate, educational institutions and quality of life assets. (2) Develop a long term strategic plan to enhance your strong attributes. (3) Market your assets to the business world to attract new investment. (4) Work to retain existing larger local businesses.
In a nutshell, cast your bait upon the water and hope the big fish are running in your direction.
If results are an indication, this course of action achieves only limited success... And yet, we continue to follow the same garden path. Perhaps it's time we consider alternatives.
One such alternative would cast both government and the community as active partners in the creation of new local business and industry. Simply put, if new business won't come to us, then we'll build our own.
The following are seeds of a basic alternative: (1) Identify a local underutilized skilled work force. (2) Conduct market research to identify possible profitable markets using the skill sets of the work group. (3) Once identified, work with existing business or form new, employee owned coops or businesses to serve those markets. (This may entail, but is not limited to providing financial aid, management and marketing assistance, payroll assistance during the startup phase and some additional training.)
Newly formed businesses should be encouraged to start simply to avoid high startup and overhead costs. (In some cases, a cottage industry approach may a solution.) The emphasis would be on growing small businesses that may eventually become larger. Once a business becomes self-supporting, the support entities would step away.
The following additional steps could compliment efforts to develop new businesses and benefit existing businesses:
- Initiate innovation incubators to develop new ideas and products. Ideas would be solicited from any and all sources. Product viability could be tested and expanded through community feedback groups.
- Form volunteer skilled labor and expertise pools to evaluate and develop new ideas. The knowledge and skills of our local work force, active and retired, is an invaluable resource. Functions could include developing prototypes, engineering basic construction techniques, developing marketing and management plans and the education and training of the current and future workforce.
- Form a cooperative to market locally made products. This could include a retail marketplace where such products, including produce and food stuffs could be purchased by both tourists and local residents and a Internet/mail order component.
- On a grander scale, government, industry and member supported technology institutes could evaluate industry specific machinery, hardware and manufacturing processes to provide related American businesses the information needed to stay competitive.
America needs to retain a strong manufacturing base utilizing our skilled workers. Our reliance on entrepreneurs and established industry solely to solve our employment woes is, in my opinion, short sighted. Typically, entrepreneurship involves a mix of ego, capital, foresight and a gambler's heart. A pragmatic approach to business creation eliminates the ego and minimizes the risk but has the potential to achieve the same desired results.