Commercializing Rural Community and Economic Development Strategic Planning

The economic recovery and development of rural America is lagging that of its metropolitancounterparts.While metropolitan areas fully replaced the job losses from the 2008-2009 GreatRecession by the third quarter of 2013 rural America has yet to replace those job losses fullyfive years later.While many of the economic forces are beyond the control of ruralcommunities (globalization natural resource policy personal preferences on location) thesolution lies in helping rural communities to help themselves by creating and implementingeconomic development strategic plans that create jobs and improve local quality of life.Perhaps as much as any company in the United States Building Communities Inc. hasconducted this work.Since 2011 70 rural communities in 10 states have completed suchstrategic plans utilizing the eight-session 12-hour strategic planning methodology which isobjective comprehensive expeditious self-directed and action-oriented. Without exceptionthe communities and planning participants have been very satisfied with their planningexperience and yet the results from such efforts have been hit-and-miss.Recognizing thatunlike their urban counterparts rural communities do not generally have professionalsdedicated to economic development the successful development and implementation of suchplans therefore requires harnessing the volunteer energy and limited professional expertisewithin rural communities.Advances in technology make it possible to streamline this process— lowering cost to communities and increasing access to the tools needed by smaller ruralcommunities.One step in this process is especially difficult for ruralcommunities—Session Six Assigning Action Steps.This stepmobilizes the community after strategies and initiatives havebeen identified and defined.Building Communities hasdeveloped a variety of low-tech approaches to assistcommunities to assign action steps for plan implementationwith limited results.This SBIR Phase I proposal is designed tosolve this problem by using technology to guide thevolunteers and professional planners.The Phase I technological innovations will lead to improvedefficiency and effectiveness by rural planning participants inhelping their communities overcome well-documented rural economic challenges.The risks ofthis project have been lowered by using a proven strategic planning approach and carefullyidentifying technology solutions.The activities in Phase I of this project should prove thefeasibility of using the technological approach to solve the process bottleneck.During Phase IIthe complete technology solution will be implemented and tested offering significantcommercialization opportunities for Building Communities.