An interesting case in point. Look at Mississauga Ontario. For years it focused on attracting talent and for years it was a bedroom community of Toronto. Once a critical mass and diversity of talent lived there the businesses started to migrate there. Today it's a force to be reckoned with. By the nature of our geography and proximity to Vancouver and Whistler, we've attracted a very talented, skilled and creative work force. The key now is to show this off to the world.
Nate Dolha added excellent followup to this point: While Mississauga has enjoyed enormous success as a centre of commerce and innovation, there was much more to it than just having talent move to the community. They ensured there was alignment between their long term strategic plan, downtown plan, transit plan, etc. They targeted specific industries, lowered barriers to entry, and built partnerships with both industry and educational institutions. The attraction of talent was just one facet of their overall strategy. http://www.mississauga.ca/
Another great example of visionary, incremental and opportunistic economic development is Stratford Ontario. This was a town struggling to find itself in the 1950s. A local journalist wanted to revitalize Stratford's economy which was facing the devastating loss of its primary employer [Rail-mainly due to the imminent elimination of steam power] by creating a theatre festival simply because it was called Startford. I'm sure people thought he was nuts. Today...and I may not get these stats perfectly correct but they are close...Stratford sells $38 million worth of tickets between April and October every year. And every visitor, and they had more than 300,000+ people at the festival this year, spends $288 on average=$86million is infused into the local economy during just 6 months of summer. That festival was initiated in the 1950s. Food for thought.
I look forward to other people sharing their thoughts on this possibility.
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