The career pathways for EDPros are shifting

Friday, March 28, 2003

Here's a good profile of Dennis Yablonsky Pennsylvania's new economic development secretary. He's typical of the new breed of EDPro that is coming into the field: a successful entrepreneur, skilled at innovation and business development.

Most EDPros taking leadership at the state and local level have developed their reputations with experience in business attraction. Their skill sets are related to marketing, land development, and incentive-based deal structuring. There's an important lesson in the shift. Political leaders will be valuing business development experience more highly in the future.

So, if you are an ambitious EDPro on the way up, make sure you get some experience in business development...working with incubators, start-up programs, university/industry initiatives.

(For another example of the shift, here's a bio of Tim Mueller, another former entrepreneur who heads Cleveland's economic development department.)

posted by Ed Morrison |

Subscribe with Bloglines






Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License.
links
Google
The Web EDPro Weblog