Page 281 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

270 Scott Loveridge

areas, services tend to concentrate in county seats or in regional population
centers. While this helps serve the largest number of residents at the least
cost and makes use of the most sophisticated infrastructure, it can be diffi-
cult for more remote businesses to access critical coaching services. This sit-
uation, in turn, can lead to lost opportunities and uneven growth within a
community.
Similarly, many services are dedicated to keeping and growing the area’s
largest businesses because a major plant closing can be devastating. Ignor-
ing small businesses, however, again leads to lost opportunities. A consis-
tent effort to maintain contacts with, and provide services to, remote and
smaller businesses is an important part of a comprehensive community-
based entrepreneurship strategy.
39. Does the community provide assistance with marketing (Muske and
Woods 2004; Woods and Muske, chapter 11)? Smaller businesses often are
not adept at navigating channels to identify how to sell their products to
more people. Marketing goes well beyond Website development or adver-
tising; businesses must be coached on these practices but also in identifying
appropriate markets and pricing structures. Some may also benefit from
consolidating the efforts of many small businesses into a larger pool for
marketing purposes.
40. Does the community provide assistance with employee management
(Muske and Woods 2004; Woods and Muske, chapter 11)? As an entrepre-
neur advances from one person doing it all to a larger enterprise, the re-
quired skill sets change. Innovators with great technical skills may have no
clue about managing personnel. This situation places the business at risk as
the wrong people are hired, as employees are poorly trained, as labor laws
are not followed because the owner is unaware of them, or as potentially
good employees become dissatisfied due to underdeveloped communica-
tion and reward systems. Assisting a firm as it grows and engages more peo-
ple can keep the business on track for the future.
41. Does the community help entrepreneurs expand the geographic area of their
market (Muske and Woods 2004)? A classic local economic development
strategy is to expand exports from the region (Shaffer 1989). Many busi-
nesses stop growing because the local market is saturated. Helping busi-
nesses move from meeting demand in their immediate area to selling to
more distant areas can be key to increased sales and employment growth.

CONCLUSION

This chapter has synthesized major findings from across the United States
and several other countries on enhancing the performance of local
economies through systems to support growth and development of entre-