Rural Development Systems: Lessons from Europe and Northern Michigan

Abstract

Fragmented economic development efforts that are not coordinated either strategically or operationally have limited impact. Across rural America, individual economic development agencies have lacked the capacity to use their complementary strengths to shape a vision of how to develop a region. Often, these efforts do not relate to the real customers of rural development, the existing firms that create most new jobs. The projects that are implemented are of short term and limited scale, and the real systems that influence the direction of an economy are ignored. Many European countries seek to improve the competitiveness of a region through accelerating the modernization of firms. It takes a systems approach to enhance the private initiative of firms by improving the relationship between firms and the supporting relationships of institutions involved in training, technology, and finance. Lessons can be drawn from this approach, and a new rural model for taking a systems approach to improving the competitiveness of firms in northern Michigan is discussed.