SEDC Informing Your Strategic Plan with Research and Data

This session will cover the elements of a strategic planning process, specifically the current best practices in Economic Development strategic planning. We will walk through all the steps of successfully engaging with stakeholders to join the planning process (including getting funding together), informing the process with market data, coming up with strategies, testing those strategies against market realities, and coming up with a good outcomes-measurement system. All along the way, we will be highlighting how data can be used to ground the planning process: using socio-demographics to understand current conditions, using employment trends by sector and other data to understand your targeted industries, testing individual elements of your plan against real estate data for financial feasibility, and using data to benchmark your community’s progress on meeting your desired outcomes.