HOW SUCCESSFUL ARE BR&E IMPLEMENTATION EFFORTS? A FOUR-STATE EXAMPLE

Abstract

For several years, Business Retention and Expansion professionals have pointed out that BR&E visitation programs appear to be relatively successful until it comes time to implement the plans developed in the BR&E visitation program. At the implementation stage, however, there have been very mixed reports. A number of articles have documented the benefits of BR&E visitation programs. Yet, none of these have examined the implementation of the strategic plans developed by BR&E visitation programs. Few communities would undertake the program if they did not expect to see some action on their plans. Likewise, few state agencies or universities would continue to support BR&E educational efforts if the BR&E programs do not implement the results of their BR&E visitation and planning programs. Because of the importance of this issue and the lack of systematic research on it, a four-state research project was conducted on this issue over the past two years. The major questions addressed were: (1) To what degree have BR&E visitation programs implemented the strategic plans which they developed? (2) How beneficial have these BR&E plans been? (3) Did these BR&E visitation programs conform to strategic planning principles? (4) Was the level of benefits received higher for programs that followed strategic planning principles?Community/Rural/Urban Development,