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Energizing Your Economy Through Regional Partnerships

Like your community, your region is also a product you want to use in your marketing efforts. A region is a community of interests and can be as small as a neighborhood or as large as a multi-county or multi-state area. The region is defined here as the marketing partnerships that can work together for positive economic development, instead of traditional geographic boundaries.

There are some that think regionalism makes government bigger resulting in a higher rate of expenditures. Different agendas and competing interests can certainly impede regional cooperation. However, global markets are now requiring regions to find new competitive niches. If community leaders can build on innovation and entrepreneurship and rid themselves of old business models and behavior, it is possible to pool and strategically use regional resources for the good of all.

Thinking regionally means thinking beyond political boundaries to those areas which share a common interest. Partnerships and coalitions are often informal, though sometimes formal agreements are needed. They are tailored to specific projects, such as marketing, job creation, tourism, and transportation.

Regional cooperation is not synonymous with inter-governmental cooperation. Appropriate players from all sectors are what make the cooperation work.

Regional alliances are often organized around clusters, also called corridors that can provide an approach to finding an economic niche.

Packaging your community as part of a region means you have a lot more to offer when can result in greater success in creating economic prosperity.

To understand the local economy, it is necessary to see how your community fits into your region, i.e. workforce, housing and transportation. It’s important that communities educate their constituents on how regional economic success can mean better employment opportunities and tax base to the community. It is important that this is also conveyed to the media, and other public venues. Competition rather than cooperation can jeopardize local success.

Some Guiding Principles for Regional Collaboration are:

  • Focus on a compelling purpose
  • Mobilize and engage the right people; help each locally owned business or organization to be world class, unique and continually innovative
  • Define regional boundaries based on interests of citizens; encourage residents and visitors to develop long-term bonds with the region
  • Name and frame issues together; know all the assets specific to your area and develop ways to add value to them
  • Deliberate and make collaborative decisions
  • Take strategic action by weaving together the assets of an area such as the artists, specialty food producers, local heritage, and recreation opportunities
  • Be strategic about connecting urban and rural areas in the region
  • Be flexible and adaptive to sustain regional collaboration

Advantages of Regional Cooperation

  • Nurture communications and relationships with people, agencies and organizations through trust and accountability 
  • Provides opportunities for open discussions and debate 
  • Share successes through media and other means to encourage more success and promote dialogue with the public on what success means to them
  • Opportunities to become more empowered to take risks
  • Take advantage of economies of scale, i.e. regional partners can have more financial resources than working individually
  • Gain tool to achieve greater political clout through multi-partner, multi-level buy-in and availability of expertise. The diversity of a group can enrich the pool of ideas, needs of citizens served, cultural prospective, ideas and approach to issues
  • Creates a sense of local and regional harmony of cooperation instead of competition 

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