Innovations Guide Offers Keys to Long-term Growth for Rural Regions

A new book released by the Sierra Business Council (SBC), Investing for Prosperity, suggests new ways for rural regions to achieve long-term prosperity. The 148-page guide brings together many of the latest innovations rural communities across North America are using to grow their economies, improve their towns and build their social capital.

SBC, a nonprofit organization that promotes the Sierra Nevada region, finds that communities in the Sierra Nevada can diversify and expand their economies in ways that were not possible over the last 150 years, thanks to new technologies and the market premium put on the Sierra's natural assets and livable communities. The same finding applies to many other fast-growing rural regions in America, including New England and the Pacific Northwest.

The product of three years of research, Investing for Prosperity includes 44 case studies and a resource list for more information. The guide recommends four integrated strategies to help rural communities build long-term wealth:

• Capitalize on existing assets. The book provides examples of how rural communities are transforming existing industries such as cattle ranching and wood products and natural and historic assets, traditional downtowns for example, into new economic engines.
• Cultivate innovation and economic diversity. Investing urges rural communities to utilize the Internet and other new tools to cultivate a locally driven innovation economy.
• Create long-term social capital. The Sierra and other rural areas can compete in the 21st century innovation economy if they create social capital to support the business people who build financial capital, the book states. And,
• Catalyze community partnerships. Investing offers advice on how to use collaborative tools and tracks cooperative efforts such as habitat planning in the Sierra Nevada’s fastest growing jurisdiction, Placer County.

The Sierra – stretching from Plumas to Kern counties – is California's third fastest growing region, behind the San Joaquin Valley and San Diego. To download Chapter 1 or to purchase Investing for Prosperity in its entirety, visit SBC at: http://www.sbcouncil.org/publications.asp