Questions

Answers

Local Economic Development (LED) is being approached in many ways given the various elements that have some impact on LED, e.g. land use policy, governance capacities, infrastructure, basic services, stakeholder participation, enterprise development, etc. What specific aspect of LED are you working on?

For me, the main target group of Local Economic (!) Development remains being the company level. Within the framework of Systemic competitiveness, the enterprise does not prosper by itself as it does in cooperation with others (i.e. in value chains or clusters) (Micro level). Its success depends significantly on business support institutions (Meso level), on appropriate business environment (Macro level) and on a business development friendly mindset of stakeholders (Meta level).

Nowadays, I understand LED more and more as a complex system. This kind of system is based on multiple interactions and it is very difficult to predict its behavior. We have to accept that our understanding of this complexity will always remain limited. Here, the role of LED is to help understand the patterns of the local systems rather than to plan the achievement of a specific strategic goal. It is about giving support to a learning by doing approach and acknowledging diversity.

Why is LED relevant in the country (or countries) where you are working? What are current opportunities and challenges?

In Latin America where I am mainly working, we are looking to a paradigmatic shift in LED. It started as a guerilla or self-defense approach in the 90s, in opposition to the neoliberal mainstream. As the State reduced its engagement mainly to macroeconomic stability and privatization measures, Local Governments used LED activities to compensate the absence of state policies to promote economic development and fight unemployment and poverty.

Today the State returned to a more active role in economic promotion activities. Concepts like import-substitution and industrial policies are again en vogue. On the other hand, the challenge for LED promoters lies in incorporating the local level into national economic policy. It is a question of overcoming the antagonism from “bottom up” and “top down” development in favor of an integrated multi-level policy. In Argentina this issue is following the slogan of the “federalization of productive policy”.

If you had to name three readings (they can be books, training manuals, articles, briefs, case studies, etc.) and three websites that have been more helpful for your work, which would these be?

There are so many books and articles to read about local economic development. Although it seems to be impossible to reduce the basic literature to three publications, I would recommend some books from related areas which can help the LED practitioner to amplify his/her perspective:

Many times we are thinking in dualities, i.e. seeing LED as a bottom-up and against the top-down approach. The same is the understanding of LED as endogenous phenomena only and ignoring the need for exogenous impulses. The book Polarity Management (Johnson 1992) helps to make visible the strength and weaknesses of alleged dualities and to find the right balance.

For many scholars and practitioners, LED mainly means strategic planning. In order to open the view to different understandings of strategy I recommend to join Mintzberg’s Strategy Safary (Mintzberg, Ahlstrand et al. 1999). The reading helps to see strategy as a combination of a deliberate planning effort and emergent phenomena.

Also, I recommend the reading with an overview of different strategic approaches and tools. System Concepts in Action (Williams and Hummelbrunner 2010) is a very practical guide and tool-book in which the LED practitioner is introduced to navigate in the complex reality of development.

Johnson, B. (1992). Polarity management: Identifying and managing unsolvable problems, Human Resource Development Pr.

               

Mintzberg, H., B. Ahlstrand, et al. (1999). Strategy safari, Wirtschaftsverl. Ueberreuter.

               

Williams, B. and R. Hummelbrunner (2010). Systems Concepts in Action: A Practitioner's Toolkit, Stanford Business Books.

               

 

Already quite difficult to select the best readings for LED, it is nearly impossible to recommend only three Websites. Therefore I chose to recommend sites related to the work within Mesopartners:

www.mesopartners.com Mesopartner is a consultancy firm which started ten years ago to promote the LED approach in many developing and transitional countries. Today, the firm provides capacity development and supports private sector development with a multilevel and systemic approach.

Furthermore, Mesopartner is a pioneer in the use of Podcasts in LED training. The LEDcast www.ledcast.net is a widely used source for an entertaining form of leaning about LED and related topics. Its use is free.

Finally, I recommend the website http://web.conectadel.org/ in Spanish. This program provided by the Interamerican Development Bank is a platform for multiple activities to train and learn about LED in Latin America.

Which are the three main lessons or *knowledge nuggets* that you have learned while working on local economic development?

To promote LED one has to go beyond simple strategic planning.

It is less about concepts, but rather about understanding the complexity of local (economic) systems

The facilitation of local development processes is a skill which needs to be developed much more.

What is the next LED activity on your calendar?

Writing a Manual on Facilitation in LED within the ConectaDEL Program.