Page 12 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

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Introduction and Overview

Norman Walzer and Adee Athiyaman

Finding and implementing successful local economic development strate-
gies, especially in rural areas, has become more important in recent years as
local officials struggle to stimulate stagnant or declining economies and
stem population losses. Rural areas, in general, have experienced a signifi-
cant restructuring as higher paying manufacturing jobs are replaced by
lower-paying service jobs (Walzer 2003). While local development practi-
tioners are concerned about these changes, they all too often have neither
the staff nor expertise to mount a successful business recruiting campaign
and find it hard to compete with larger centers for relocation jobs.
High school graduates leave rural areas for better employment opportu-
nities and there are too few high-paying economic opportunities to bring
them back to their home areas later in life (Goetz and Rupasingha 2005).
While they realize that youth represent the future of rural communities and
their ability to prosper, or at least survive, rural community leaders and de-
velopment practitioners are often unsure how to change the local economic
climate and policies to successfully deal with this issue.
Rural communities often pursue policies or strategies that were success-
ful in the past, hoping that these efforts will succeed in the future. Indus-
trial attraction practices, based on offering low-cost sites and wages, at-
tracted many businesses and jobs in earlier times. However, this approach
is becoming less effective now because of even lower costs in offshore loca-
tions and increased competition among states to lure the relatively few large
businesses seeking to relocate.
Promoting small business start-ups and development has been recognized
as a strategy for many years following research showing that a majority of the
employment growth was in small companies. An aging population in rural

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