If you happen to be attending the National Association of Counties Annual Conference (in New Orleans from July 17-20), please come join us at what will be a very interesting and informative workshop entitled “County Economic Diversification:  Moving Beyond Single-Industry Economies.”  Many counties across the US remain highly dependent on a single employer or industry.  Coal-reliant regions get a lot of attention on this front, but other communities may be overly reliant on a large employer or a major facility, such as a military base or a major tourist attraction.

While strong economic anchors are always important, effective development strategies also recognize the benefits of economic diversification as a means to create new jobs and to recover in the face of economic shocks.  We’ll discuss effective approaches and strategies and also hear from local leaders in Louisiana and West Virginia who are currently working to support economic diversification in their regions.  Hope to see you next week! 

Over the past year, I’ve been seeing growing critiques of various business accelerator programs, especially those focused on technology sectors. (You can find some examples here and here.)  The critics present a number of claims.  Some simply don’t like government support for startups. For others, the traditional tech accelerator, focused on apps and IT, is becoming less relevant in the age of AI and deep tech innovation.

These growing critiques suggest that it might be time to rethink current business acceleration approaches and test some new models and ideas.  I’m not yet sure which approaches will work best, but I’m excited to see some new ideas out in the marketplace.  The latest comes from Workday and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), who have launched the Workday Foundation Solopreneurship Accelerator Program.  This small experiment will provide small grants ($10,000) to solopreneurs developing new AI tools and resources. The effort is targeted to non-traditional entrepreneurs who typically can’t access the classic tech accelerator programs focused on large exits and venture capital investing.  Instead, the effort helps local people learn how to use AI to support business and community needs. 

We’ll see how this effort pans out, but it’s inspiring to see test programs of this sort.  I hope to see more experimentation going forward.