The 2050 Economic Developer

With each passing year, we are offered a time for reflection, planning, and predictions. Taking stock in the more exciting of the three, I spent time thinking about the occupation of economic development and wondered how the broader profession might change in tune with a rapidly evolving business world.

Indisputably, the pace of technological advancements, mounting environmental challenges, and shifting societal priorities will transform conventional responsibilities within the profession, testing even the most astute interdisciplinarians. Exactly how his all shakes out…well that is where its entertaining to opine for a moment.

What does the Profession of Economic Development look like in the far but not too distant future? Call it – The Year 2050.

1.?? Staffing: EDOs small and large will rely heavily on artificial intelligence. Dashboards will monitor local economies in real time, enabling lean organizations to adjust marketing, policies, and incentive strategies with greater precision and frequency. AI Specialists (or by some other name) will be one of the most common hires across the economic development field. AI-skilled professionals entering the field in medium-large EDOs will be valued over other employees with more experience. Recruiting will expand to include more subsets of technology, sociology, and environmental sciences.

2.?? Funding: Data key to assessing the health of communities will be highly commoditized. Powerful market analysis tools will help validate targets set during the strategic planning process, improve transparency and benchmarking, better aligning both public and private stakeholders. Predictive analytics will be thrown at the feet of local elected officials in pursuit of funding and programmatic support. AI will simplify grant application processes and even help gauge public sentiment on local initiatives.

3.?? Measuring Success: The Economic Developer will focus more on themes like inclusivity, resiliency, and sustainability. Real time performance metrics will provide unprecedented insights on job creation and employment, tourism, business viability, sustainability, and workforce development. Widespread access to data will establish greater accountability in the field as well as streamline state, regional and local resources. Robust datasets from around the world and the globalization of local economies will reframe competitor analyses.

4.?? Incentives: AI will bring humanity to the forefront of state and local incentive programs, adding additional layers to both state and local incentive considerations and changing them with greater frequency. Illuminated through robust analytics, social equity will play a more important role, and a growing American wealth divide will further inch economic development to legislative stage-center. Robust ROI modeling will change incentive structuring across the country. Business eligibility within certain statutory and discretionary incentive programs will be subject to streaming data flows and real-time analytics, such as energy subsidies.

5.?? Real Estate Development: The “developer” focused economic development professional will not be a relic, but many of their tools will be. Real estate developers will partner with state and local communities to integrate smart city technologies including advanced energy, transportation, and other new-age infrastructure solutions. Digital twins will no longer be cost prohibitive for most communities, and breakthroughs in IoT will force a focus towards urban renewal and sustainability. NIMBY advocates will harness AI-powered insights to detect and even predict undesired development, getting to the picket line faster and in greater numbers.

6.?? Workforce & Education: AI will force a reboot of the American Workforce and mobilize affected governments to increase spending on public education programs. Workforce development and higher education curricula will triage through the elimination of AI-endangered occupations, inevitably thrusting reskill programs to the forefront of the workforce development profession. An AI education revolution will shorten the shelf life of the many certifications and undermine rigid college degree programs. “On The Job” training programs will get an injection of cash as learning technologies embolden employers and communities to partner in the design of modular, highly customized courses.

7.?? Location Analytics: The business of extracting and analyzing data collected during site selection is ripe for venture capital. AI will forge novel datasets spawning robust, proprietary analytic tools at a faster rate. Future location intelligence capabilities will attract more investors to the field of site selection, including the gaze of tech giants and real estate moguls. As powerful geospatial and business level datasets accelerate the pace of location decisions, governments will be forced to speed up incentive and site review processes. Advanced site selection and economic development project software will focus on managing many of these stakeholders on one platform, simplifying transactions between multiple parties and monetizing the process along the way.

8.?? Quality of Life / Placemaking: Looking past 2025’s return-to-office trend and evaluating the next generation of corporate decision makers, quality of life and placemaking will need to be of greater importance to the economic developer. The oldest Gen Z employee is now 30 years-old and they value things like safety, culture, amenities, mental health, community, and connectivity?over monetary reinforcement...at least for now. Cloud infrastructure will continue to bridge the digital and physical realms, and employment location flexibility will put pressure on urban planning departments to design tangible community experiences. Technology will pave way for a “rural renaissance” and bring new opportunities to previously untenable and simply overlooked business locations.

9.?? Industries in Focus: Themes that will dominate economic development announcements include pharmaceutical and medical mfg., automation and robotics, datacenters, energy plants, next-gen chemicals, and new-age infrastructure. AI will of course drive efficiencies across many industries but will become a backdrop for other transformational breakthroughs like quantum computing, gene-editing, and decentralized energy systems. Quantum computing and gene editing will unlock a pharmaceutical revolution, accelerating drug discovery and production to unprecedented levels. Economic feasibility gains in next gen feed stocks will trigger new “bio economies” creating supplier waves across the energy industry. Within the manufacturing sector, the U.S. currently ranks 10th in robot density (285 robots per 10,000). To compete with global mfg. powerhouses like China, Korea, Germany, and Japan, we will see U.S. manufacturers surpass a 1-10 robot density (1,000 robots per 10,000).

10. Marketing & Recruitment: Immersive, hyper-personal driven content will dominate economic development marketing campaigns. AI will impower self-sustaining content systems that engage progressively niche target audiences with highly customized content. Advances in language translation programs will allow communities to effortlessly engage with foreign decision makers. With language barriers removed, EDOs will better advertise local business ecosystems to foreign investors, while also enabling international talent attraction through virtual experiences. Marketing roles will be geared towards “strategic thinkers,” focusing less on task completion and more on data driven decision making.

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