Economic Gardening part three

Category: News & General Info

Published: Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Economic Gardening

...part three of three of an article by:

Christian Gibbons
Director, Business/Industry Affairs
City of Littleton, Colorado

LATEST DEVELOPMENTS

The Creative Class

The most current addition to our thinking came about from a book written by Richard Florida called "The Rise of the Creative Class." Florida 's contention is that about 30 percent of the population is involved in "creative" work, which is the source of new jobs and wealth. Florida 's work resonated with us because it expanded our notion of a small core of entrepreneurial executives to a broader (and probably more realistic) notion of an "entrepreneurial cast of characters." But we were dismayed at the public policy reaction.

The discussion shifted overnight from recruiting businesses to recruiting the creative class. The solution appeared to be "build some restaurants and bars and they will come." Little attention was paid to the more complex, biological and interrelated factors of building an environment conducive to entrepreneurial activity: intellectual stimulation, openness to new ideas, the support infrastructure of venture capital and universities, information and community support. To us, it felt like a mechanical solution to a biological need.

Entrepreneurial Policy

Today, support of entrepreneurial activity is spreading as a policy approach due to the energetic work of a number of national and regional organizations including the Kauffman Foundation, Edward Lowe Foundation, Milken Institute, Progressive Policy Institute, Center for Rural Entrepreneurship and Babson College. States like Wyoming, Georgia, Michigan, and North Carolina have either formal entrepreneurial policies or pilot projects underway as a part of their economic development efforts. Major states like California regularly include "economic gardening" as an agenda subject in their state economic development conferences. Even bigger cities like Oakland and Berkeley have small pilot economic gardening projects underway.

ECONOMIC GARDENING TODAY

We are more convinced than ever that our fundamental concept (entrepreneurs drive economies) is right and that healthy communities have a healthy base of entrepreneurs.

There are a number of elements needed to create a nurturing environment for entrepreneurs, not all of which can be provided by public agencies. In Littleton we have focused on the following three main elements in our program:

Information

For a business to survive and thrive today, it must depend on critical information. We spend as much as three-quarters of our time providing tactical and strategic information.

Over the years we have developed very sophisticated search capabilities using tools often only available to large corporations. We subscribe to a number of database services and CD-ROMS which provide us access to over 100,000 publications worldwide. We use these tools to develop marketing lists, competitive intelligence, industry trends, new product tracking, legislative research and to answer a number of other custom business questions. We also monitor all new construction through Dodge Construction Reports so that local contractors can bid on projects.

We track real estate activity and have access to the market reports of national consulting firms. Our Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software can plot customer addresses as well as provide demographic, lifestyle and consumer expenditure information. We also monitor local businesses and vacant buildings and projects.

Finally the information component also includes training and seminars in advanced management techniques such as systems thinking, temperament, complexity theory and customer service strategies.

Infrastructure

The second element of our program is infrastructure—not just basic physical infrastructure but also quality of life infrastructure and intellectual infrastructure. In the area of basic infrastructure, because we are the city, we invest in areas like interchanges and light rail stations and major street/sidewalk rehab projects. These are all just basic good government.

We also invest in quality of life projects including parks and open space (we have have four times the national average), trails (every major drainage channel in the city has a trail built in it), sidewalk widening in the downtown neighborhoods, restoration of the historic county courthouse, and sponsorship of the holiday's Candlelight Walk (we put up a million white lights in the trees downtown every year).

The third type of infrastructure is something we call intellectual infrastructure: the curriculum, courses and training, and introduction of best practices that help keep our companies competitive. For example, we helped build a telecommunication curriculum and e-commerce course at our local community college. We also provide videotaped engineering courses from Colorado University.

All of our infrastructure work is based on the idea that economic development and community development are two sides of the same coin. In the New Economy, where new wealth and jobs are being created by knowledge firms, creating a community that is attractive to entrepreneurs and the talent they hire is as important as natural resources and heavy rail were to Old Economy companies.

Connections

The third element of our economic gardening program is connections — connections to trade associations, think tanks, academic institutions, and other similar companies (industry clusters) and CEO's.

We are aware of research in network theory that indicates that an increase in the number of business connections increases the innovation levels of companies. In particular, "weak ties" to "hubs" outside a business's normal daily connections are important for bringing in new ideas.

We have made a point of connecting our businesses to our local community college and the University of Colorado, as well as the work of interesting research organizations like The Santa Fe Institute and The Colorado Issues Network.

SUMMARY

We by no means have solved the economic development riddle. We cannot patent it, put it in a jar and take it to any community and guarantee results. But we do think we are closing in on the answer. We think it involves slow, painstaking community development with an eye on the innovators. We think the gazelles are critical drivers. We think increasing connections and the flow of information helps and we think the greatest opportunity is during periods of chaos.

We know NTJ and STJ temperaments are important in high growth companies but so is temperament diversity (stability AND change). The "creative class" also fits in there somewhere. We know community development is economic development and a sound infrastructure is the starting point.

We also know complexity science contends you can't control or predict complex adaptive systems to any great degree. The goal is no longer control, it is adaptation through innovation. When organizations and local economies move toward the edge of chaos, adaptation and competition improve and the chances for survival improve. Hence, anything that increases the flow of information and ideas and anything that increases the number of connections is worth undertaking.

In Littleton, we have moved from mechanical models to biological models to help us understand the nature of local economies and the businesses that inhabit them. After over a decade of very intensive experimentation, investigation and observation, we have come to a sobering conclusion: economies are massive biological organisms and not very amenable to control by anyone. Neither economic gardeners, nor economic recruiters nor politicians nor anyone else is running them. At best, we are adapting to everyone else's adaptations.

The Work Remaining

 What I love about economic gardening is the intellectual stage on which we get to explore. Its very essence requires that we not only understand the complex mechanism of economies but the never ending kaleidoscope of human activity as it relates to the building, maintaining and survival of companies and communities. I doubt if we will ever completely understand it but if we come to an appreciation of how complex of a task we have undertaken, that will be a major step forward.

Maybe even more exciting, other communities have joined the grand experiment and are bringing their own insights and experiences to add to our unfolding understanding of this complex subject. There are a number of economic gardening projects around the United States today, as well as over 10,000 hits on the Google search engine. Our Internet mail list, "Econ-Dev," has over 500 members in 14 countries.

In 50 years, we will look back at these early efforts and marvel at how crude they were. These are the "Kitty Hawk" days in which we are simply trying to prove a principle. I am absolutely convinced that the tools, techniques and general theory will get more sophisticated with each passing generation.

Some day in the far future, when policy makers and field activists are working with third world communities trying to improve their lives beyond small hovels, starvation, poor health, ignorance fueling hatreds and all the other issues associated with poverty-they will automatically refer to their field manual for growing healthy economies and we as economic gardeners will have developed and tested those best practices.

And as such we will have made a difference in the world.

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