There's been some confusion and possibly conflicting information around small business job growth, new business job growth and start-up trends in general in the press lately. That is part of why this new report from the Kaufmann Foundation caught my attention. While the whote report is worth reading, this chart particularly caught my attention - …
Continue reading from the Good Ideas File: job creation and young businesses
I wrote this in response to a debate on Facebook a few days ago regarding whether or not urban bicycle riders should be required to wear helmets (a lot of people think that they shouldn't be required because the inconvenience may discourage people from biking for urban transportation. Kind of messes up the hair.) As …
Continue reading Time to piss off the bike riders: a lesson in unintended consequences.
I've been on a bit of a Las Vegas Downtown Project tear lately, in part because it embodies a whole new approach to a lot of the issues I raised in the book. One of the big challenges with talking about the Downtown Project as a model, though, is that there are a whole hell …
I've written a lot about the Downtown Project in Las Vegas lately, both here and on Wiseeconomy.com, and there's more yet to come. For me, it's a fascinating new approach to urban revitalization -- more comprehensive, more high-touch, and, most surprisingly, in many ways more accessible for organizations that lack their deep pockets than you might …
A brief follow-up to yesterday's post about building local entrepreneurship through accelerators, using Bad Girl Ventures as an example. Here's a short video of one of the BGV alumna, Robin Gentry McGee of Functional Formularies telling the story of how she got from realizing a significant gap in an increasingly important marketplace to running a …
Continue reading One more from Bad Girl Ventures: An Entrepreneur’s story
I was so delighted to see this post at the Preservation Rightsizing Network, focusing on the results of the Historic Preservation in America's Legacy Cities conference last month. The fact that this so-well-written summary came from the keyboard of Cincinnati Preservation Association's dynamo Margo Warminski didn't surprise me at all. In short, you should read …
Continue reading From the Good Ideas file: rebooting historic preservation
The Local Economy Revolution book doesn't talk specifically about online public engagement, but it does emphasize some of the factors that necessitate change in how we do public engagement - and make good online public engagement so critical today: the people we need to get involved aren't all gentleman farmers anymore (they have a lot more …
Continue reading The Online Public Engagement Emporium launches
I love my e-reader, but sometimes you just want a regular paper book - especially if you're hanging by the pool or the beach. And if you really want to look like one of the smart kids, you'll want to get caught on the beach reading The Local Economy Revolution or Why This Work Matters, right? Of course …
Continue reading Deals and more Deals: 20% off print book via Lulu.com
There's a whole chapter in the book that talks about how the basic characteristics of small businesses today means that local governments have no choice but to completely rework how they interact with them. I have the great priviledge of teaching a webinar for Lorman Education Services next month on one of my favorite topics. …
Continue reading Super special offer: 50% Discount on Local Government and Small Business webinar
I'm often assumed to be totally opposed to economic development incentives. I'm not. I just want the benefit to the broader community to be worth what we're spending. And a lot of times we don't know, or we don't ask, or we don't want to know.... or we don't ask because we don't want to …
Continue reading From the Good Ideas File: incentives that actually have a demonstrated good impact
The Local Economy Revolution Has Arrived 