Approaching LED from different backgrounds

Sometimes there are people who have never done anything else than LED in their life. But this is rare. If you are dealing with LED, you are either a local activist, and your background may be in anything, or you are an expert / advisor, and then your background may be in all sorts of things. As there are only few places in the world where you can take a course in LED, it is like that your training is in something else. Now, it is quite obvious that the way you approach LED depends on your background and your training. So what if your background is in:

• SME development: Promotion of SMEs is a very important part of LED. Thus, having a background in SME development is useful. The main challenge for you is to understand the very important role large companies can play in LED. Moreover, it is important to get an understanding of the generic LED activities, such as many of the activities addressing locational factors. If you have been working mostly with comparatively competitive SME, it will be essential that you develop an understanding of the informal sector.
• Micro-business development: Dealing with micro-enterprise is a key challenge of LED. Several of the reasons why micro businesses remain micro cannot be dealt with at the local level, e.g. national taxation policy. But when it comes to directly promoting micro businesses, the local level is quite an adequate level of intervention. For specialists in micro business promotion, the key challenge is to get a view at the bigger picture, i.e. dealing with the competitiveness-related activities (and probably coping with competitiveness, as opposed to poverty alleviation, in the first place). It is important to develop a clear analytical understanding of the differences between competitiveness-related economic promotion activities and poverty-related micro-enterprise support initiatives.
• Community development: Community development specialists are key actors in LED initiatives. However, they are not necessarily the first to accept that competitive advantage is a key target in LED. Community development workers tend to have social development and poverty alleviation as main targets of their work, and working on economic development implies an adjustment of the mindset.
• Integrated rural development: IRD specialists who start to get involved in local and regional economic development initiatives bring with them a number of key qualifications. But they also have to cope with the challenge to adjust their mindset in several ways. First, local and regional economic development does not necessarily put a strong emphasis on government. It is perfectly possible to run LED initiatives with little involvement of government, instead relying on business associations, NGOs and other actors. Second, it is not necessarily helpful to include too strong a planning element in LED. In particular in the early phase of LED initiatives, it is often more useful to run a rapid appraisal exercise to identify main obstacles and opportunities, rather than losing months with research and planning exercises.
• Urban / regional planning: The focus in urban and regional planning has changed from top-down, government-driven and strongly planning-oriented approaches to more incrementalist and participatory approaches. Based on this evolution, planners are well-prepared for LED initiatives. For them, the main challenges is to work on their understanding of business issues and company promotion techniques.
• Public administration / administrative decentralization: Specialists in public administration reform and decentralization are increasingly interested in LED issues as they perceived that in many places it turns into a key responsibility of local government. For them, the main challenge is to get out of the public sector mindset, like in the case of IRD specialists. It is crucial to understand that LED should not be run as a one-sided government activity, and that government often is the problem rather than the solution when it comes to economic development.
• Skills development / vocational training: LED is to a large extent about capacity building and skills development. This, however, does not necessarily mean that a specialist in skills development is perfectly prepared to run an LED effort. The skills development discussion is a highly specialized one, rather distant from BDS promotion or SME development. Moreover, the emphasis in this segment has rather been on national than on local issues recently. Thus, one would expect that a skills development who is facing involvement in an LED initiative will not only have to widen his perspective significantly, but will also have to adjust his approach in the field of his core competence, e.g. by dealing with flexible demand appraisal techniques.
• Employment promotion: Creating jobs is probably the most relevant target of LED initiatives. However, it is not at all evident that specialists in employment promotion are familiar with local initiatives, and if they are it is often from a welfare / social policy angle. Employment promotion is often a national-level activity, and it can not necessarily be easily downscaled to the local level. Therefore, involvement in LED work may imply a substantial adjustment in mindset and skills for employment promotion specialists.

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