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The Local Economy Solution: How Innovative, Self-Financing "Pollinator" Enterprises Can Grow Jobs and Prosperity
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About The Local Economy Solution: How
Product Description Reinventing economic development as if small business mattered In cities and towns across the nation, economic development is at a crossroads. A growing body of evidence has proven that its current cornerstone―incentives to attract and retain large, globally mobile businesses―is a dead end. Even those programs that focus on local business, through buy-local initiatives, for example, depend on ongoing support from government or philanthropy. The entire practice of economic development has become ineffective and unaffordable and is in need of a makeover. The Local Economy Solution suggests an alternative approach in which states and cities nurture a new generation of special kinds of businesses that help local businesses grow. These cutting-edge companies, which Shuman calls “pollinator businesses,” are creating jobs and the conditions for future economic growth, and doing so in self-financing ways. Pollinator businesses are especially important to communities that are struggling to lift themselves up in a period of economic austerity, when municipal budgets are being slashed. They also promote locally owned businesses that increase local self-reliance and evince high labor and environmental standards. The book includes nearly two dozen case studies of successful pollinator businesses that are creatively facilitating business and neighborhood improvements, entrepreneurship, local purchasing, local investing, and profitable business partnerships. Examples include Main Street Genome (which provides invaluable data to improve local business performance), Supportland (which is developing a powerful loyalty card for local businesses), and Fledge (a business accelerator that finances itself through royalty payments). It also shows how the right kinds of public policy can encourage the spread of pollinator businesses at virtually no cost. Review Choice- "Shuman is an economist, an attorney, and the author of three other books on local economies. This most recent book is a practical overview of how to generate economic development without selling one's soul to big government and philanthropies. Shuman developed the book from interviews he conducted in 2014 with entrepreneurs who headed up 36 ‘pollinators,' defined as 'self-financing enterprise[s] committed to boosting local business.’ A pollinator allows a community to take on key economic development functions: identifying opportunities for local businesses (the planning), fostering buy efforts (the purchasing), training locals for business opportunities (the people), showing how local businesses can work together (the partnerships), and finding how local capital can be mobilized to expand local businesses more cost-effectively than taxpayer-funded programs can (the purse). Shuman urges readers and their friends to form local investment clubs; such clubs essentially make members part of the solution because they help those interested in joining the movement move away from 'legalized bribery,' such as offering companies tax breaks to abandon their hometowns. Taken as a whole, this book presents an engaging story of the emerging localization movement by describing real people and enterprises doing real development. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through professionals and practitioners.” Kirkus Reviews- "An argument against bringing large corporations to local communities through tax incentives and grants, an approach the author claims is destructive to employment and investment. Shuman (Local Dollars, Local Sense: How to Move Your Money From Wall Street to Main Street and Achieve Real Prosperity, 2012, etc.), a longtime advocate for promoting local business and a former director of the Business Alliance For Local Living Economies, asserts that "economic development today is completely broken." Citing the 750-fold increase in subsidies for the movie industry over the past decade, the author debunks the myths circulated to support attracti
