A Model for Regional Technology-Based Economic Development

Technology-based economic development has been a highly sought-after objective forregions in developed and developing countries alike. The wealth created by regional knowledgebasedeconomies like Silicon Valley is an attractive outcome. Without understanding clusterbasedeconomic strategy, the different types of technology-based economic developmentapproaches, the factors that dictate success or failure, and how those factors interrelate within aparticular region, then the probability of success is minimal at best.Economic Development is a process and hence lends itself to a Systems Engineeringapproach, which was chosen as the methodology for analyzing and designing a better model forstudying regions around the world to identify Factors that were both common and key tosuccessful regional development. Each region was viewed as a system with inputs and outputs.The challenge in developing a useful system model is the development of the required Factorsand Processes to be used. In the development of the model most of the Factors are internal to thesystem, but many may be affected by external events. The weighting (importance) of theseFactors is the topic of much debate. To develop a baseline of Factors the Delphi method wasused. Fortunately, a number of world-wide experts agreed to participate in one on one interviewsto analyze these Factors, which in itself added a great deal to the body of knowledge of economicdevelopment beyond just the Factors. One obvious result was the essentially unanimous opinionof the group that leadership was the most important factor. A less obvious outcome, but one ofequal importance was that there are two classes of regional economic development: one for massjob creation and another for the creation of a knowledge-based regional economy. Often regionsundertake economic development without understanding this significant difference. While themodel developed can be used for either goal it is extremely important that developers know in advance which goal is being pursued, which is also one of the critical outcomes of strongleadership.While all indications are that this model is a major improvement over current approaches,because this is a new approach until this research is followed by additional interviews, and byapplying the model to actual regional technology-based economic development environments it’svalidity remains unproven.