Page 40 - 1-Entrepreneurship and Local Economic Development by Norman Walzer (z-lib.org)

Entrepreneurship as Rural Economic Development Policy 29

The obvious point to stress is that America comprises multiple regions,
each with its own competitive strengths and weaknesses, and that economic
development policies must be crafted to appropriately reflect this diversity.
To underscore one of the Council on Competitiveness’s principles for sus-
tained productivity growth referred to earlier, regional prosperity depends
on the productivity of all its industries and assets, including capitalizing on
the connections and flows of people, goods, services, ideas, and informa-
tion within regions. Thus, policies to promote and sustain regional com-
petitiveness must include policies to promote and sustain the competitive-
ness of all the places, both urban and rural, within any given region.
In assessing rural regional competitiveness, Porter concluded, among
other things, that, “economic development in rural regions is often framed
as an activity inherently different from economic development more gener-
ally. This has created policies and institutions that are not well integrated
with regional development activities in metropolitan regions” (Porter 2004,
61).
Mark Drabenstott (2003), a leading proponent of regional approaches to
economic development, makes a related point:

Regional thinking is driven by the realization that competing successfully in
global markets requires a critical mass that single cities or counties cannot
muster on their own. Thinking regionally does not come naturally, though,
when regions are shot through with jurisdictional lines laid down a century
ago or more. When the lines separate cities, counties, or even states, they rarely
define new economic opportunities. (2)
In recent testimony to the House Committee on Agriculture, Drabenstott
(2006a) stressed the importance of rural regions being able to craft effective
competitiveness strategies across the public and private sectors. Such strate-
gies, he argued, would require preinvestments in leadership capacity to fa-
cilitate regional dialogue, the identification of new sources of competitive
advantage, and the building of a consensus vision in terms of better re-
gional economic information and new tools for regional governance.
This regional imperative has been given practical expression across rural
America. The Sierra Nevada is a 400-mile-long mountain range that spans
parts of 23 counties in California and Nevada. It faces huge increases in
population and growth driven by the climate, environment, and quality of
life, but its success threatens to undermine these very same factors. The
Sierra Business Council (2003), a unique alliance of business, property,
ranching, residents, and government interests, has created a regional com-
munity and economic development strategy. Central to this strategy is a
nurturing environment for entrepreneurs, supporting the belief that entre-
preneurship creates enduring economic growth, strengthens communities,
creates more high-paying jobs, and is especially effective in rural regions.