Bringing Local Experience to Global Economic Development and Global Experience to Local Economic Development
By Michael I. Luger

orth Carolina is a fascinating laboratory for UNC's Office of Economic Development (OED) to study private and public sector problems. It is an unusually diverse state with poor, rural communities; medium-size towns with high unemployment due to the closing/downsizing of traditional industries; one of the world's most prominent high-tech meccas (the Research Triangle); and the United States' second largest financial center (Charlotte). We have economic development problems that are not unlike those in some developing countries. Yet, we are a model for the high-tech wannabees in the United States as well as in other countries.

The late Chancellor Michael Hooker established OED to apply the considerable resources of the University's faculty, staff and students to economic development problems in North Carolina and to help document the impact of the University on the state's economy. OED became a part of the business school's Frank Hawkins Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise.

Since then, OED has been a focal point for research to support public and private organizations, dealing with challenges such as:

• What to do with the workers displaced from North Carolina's traditional industries.
• How to tailor our tax system to increase business productivity and induce business locations and expansions in North Carolina.
• How to spread growth from the prosperous core counties of our metro areas to the more rural peripheral counties.
• How our communities and economic regions can mobilize their own resources to be competitive in the "new economy" of the 21st century.
• How communities can use technology to overcome economic development disadvantages. Putting research into action, some of our statewide projects include:
• The development of a network of new-generation training centers associated with our community colleges that would prepare workers for the kinds of jobs that are coming into North Carolina.
• Biennial assessments of the state's business tax incentive program, resulting in recommendations to the General Assembly to improve policy.
• The development of a system of enhanced midtech industrial parks to be built in strategic locations in rural counties that are adjacent to the urban core counties and the identification of industries that are promising targets for rural North Carolina communities.
• Strategic planning and engagement assistance - for multicounty regions (Vision 2030 and the Research Triangle's Future Clusters project), municipalities (Fayetteville and Cherokee County) and groups of individuals (the American Indian tribes and urban associations of North Carolina).
• An assessment of technology resources in rural North Carolina as a way to identify targets for investment and the development of best-practice examples of how "places left behind" have used technology resources to develop their economies.

But we have not stopped locally. We have taken what we've learned on the home front abroad. We have done work elsewhere in the United States, where decision- makers have found the North Carolina examples valuable. And learning from those projects has enriched the knowledge we bring to bear within our state.

The two-way connection between the challenges, opportunities and lessons at home and around the world is a distinguishing feature of OED. It enables us to be of service to North Carolina while also having an impact on projects across the nation and around the world.

Professor Michael I. Luger is director of the UNC Office of Economic Development. Visit www.oed.unc.edu or contact Luger at (919) 962-8870, .