Growing the \u3ci\u3eExperience\u3c/i\u3e Economy

Some of us, and I confess I am in this group, can remember when our mother would make us a birthday cake. She used basic ingredients or commodities like flour, sugar, eggs and cocoa to create it from scratch. It was always a wonderful creation and quite affordable – probably under 50 cents for the entire cake. Then a few years later it seemed fashionable to use cake mixes and canned frostings. Betty Crocker, Duncan Hines and others figured out that they could take the commodities and package them in such a way as to make a consumer good. It saved time and energy and people were willing to pay for the convenience. Fast forward a few years and buying a cake mix was not quite good enough. We are now willing to go to a bakery or grocery store and purchase a birthday cake. We buy not only the cake, but the service of having the cake already completed and ready to use. Correspondingly the price goes up, but this is not a huge issue, because we were again saving personal time and energy

Strengthening Quality of Life in Small Towns

Quality of life is often mentioned as the reason why some people choose to live in a small town. But if you try to get a definition of what quality of life means, you quickly discover that there are all kinds of answers. For instance, it may be the low student-to-teacher ratios in the local school, or it may be the friendly check-out person at the grocery store or the variety of activities available through civic organizations and local churches which come to mind when people define small town quality of life

Strengthening Quality of Life in Small Towns

Quality of life is often mentioned as the reason why some people choose to live in a small town. But if you try to get a definition of what quality of life means, you quickly discover that there are all kinds of answers. For instance, it may be the low student-to-teacher ratios in the local school, or it may be the friendly check-out person at the grocery store or the variety of activities available through civic organizations and local churches which come to mind when people define small town quality of life

Understanding the Process of Selling

Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and then the countdown to Christmas… tis the season for buying! But if you work in the retail environment, it is also the season for selling. The act of “selling” is obvious in face-to-face retail environments but the steps of the selling process are also embedded in all sorts of product and service settings

Changing Rural Population: The Long View

If you frequent a small town coffee shop in Nebraska you will probably hear conversations about the price of farm commodities, speculation about the next local high school game and frustration linked to the declining rural population. The first two topics seem to demand a little gossip and rumor but the last one, rural population change, can be supported with local, statewide and even national facts to make a more thoughtful discussion. Granted, this does not usually happen in the coffee shop. But rural community leaders, with a little bit of insight, can better understand the rural flow of people over time in an effort to more accurately position their community in the future

A New Twist to Regional Economic Development

Regional collaboration has always sounded like a good idea. The challenge was that it was hard to implement. From a business perspective, it was easier and more cost effective to make adjustments to your own business plan without asking for added input from other regional businesses, agencies and institutions. When times are good, you have the luxury of working independently. However, when you are faced with a general downturn in the economy and increased global competition, as many of the business sectors are today, you look hard for other ways of increasing efficiency. Some methods that could be explored may include old ideas with a new twist

Rural Economic Development - An Evolving Approach

In rural economic development, the old way of doing business no longer works. There used to be a time when all a community had to do was have an adequate infrastructure, a supply of low-cost labor, some tax incentives and a few empty spec buildings, and they could attract new businesses. Granted, there was still competition between communities to attract new businesses, but the components that communities had to work with were known commodities to both the potential firms and to the community

Changing Rural Population: The Long View

If you frequent a small town coffee shop in Nebraska you will probably hear conversations about the price of farm commodities, speculation about the next local high school game and frustration linked to the declining rural population. The first two topics seem to demand a little gossip and rumor but the last one, rural population change, can be supported with local, statewide and even national facts to make a more thoughtful discussion. Granted, this does not usually happen in the coffee shop. But rural community leaders, with a little bit of insight, can better understand the rural flow of people over time in an effort to more accurately position their community in the future

Remote Work Is Not Going Away: How Can Rural Communities Take Advantage of this Opportunity?

Since the COVID-19 pandemic as of 2020, are we looking at a national remote work “new normal” with a hybrid office and remote work combination as an additional option? This is an important question for rural areas. Discusses remote work trends and steps needed to leverage remote work in the rural context

Measuring Community Development Impacts - It’s Not as Easy as it Sounds

Every year policy makers at the local, state and federal level make decisions on the kind and amount of investment they should make in community development activities or programs. These efforts can be very broad and encompassing or very specific and tangible. Transportation projects, housing subsidies and small business assistance education programs are just a few examples of community development efforts that are supported at the federal level. The funding of a community center, providing youth career education and supporting a day-care center are a few examples of either state and/or local community development decisions. Suppose you are one of those policy-makers. You want to provide the citizens of the state with the greatest return on investment. What should you do? How do you compare these vastly different investments? It truly is like comparing apples to oranges. How do you weigh and balance these investments