Understanding LED: What? Why? How? Who with what?
What resources are required & where do they come from?
What are the main roles in LED?
What work must be done and in what sequence?
What type of interventions achieve best results efficiently?
What are the key determinants of competitive advantage?
What is a local economy and where are the opportunities?
What outcome are we trying to achieve with LED?
What impact does LED aim to have on citizens?
Who needs to do what in an effective LED system?
What is expected of the leaders of the local economy?
What is expected of LED facilitators?
What is expected of stakeholders contributing to LED?
What is expected of champions driving LED initiatives?

 

Improvement Initiatives

Certain types of LED initiatives have higher impact then others. Based on the experience of many practitioners in many countries, the following guidelines may assist you in selecting smart initiatives.

 

Pursue pragmatic opportunities rather than engaging in strategic planning that takes many months. Most LED strategies are not implemented. Smart initiatives achieve high and sustained impact quickly and efficiently.

 

Focus on improving;

·          Systemic competitiveness to increase prospect of business retention, business attraction (investment) and new business formation, and

·          Accessibility of economic opportunities for the poor

 

Consider a scope of LED initiatives which:

·          Reduce constraints to business investment and growth,

·          Tackle market failures to make markets work better, and

·          Strengthen the competitiveness of local firms.

 

Include strategic change as well as continuous improvement:

·          Pro-active catalytic initiatives with high impact (subject to planning cycle)

·          Quick response to issues and opportunities when they emerge (real-time)

 

Increase the scale of initiatives by increasing the available capacity to execute:

·          Leverage existing capacities: intellectual capital, market power, stakeholder relationships, goodwill, and so forth.

·          Select catalytic interventions benefitting many enterprises rather than few,

 

Increase the viability of good ideas / plans / strategies by confirming:

·          Availability of capacity to execute,

·          Commitment of this capacity to execute, and

Availability of the other resources required to execute.



The information above is freely available under a Creative Commons attribution share-alike license.