Growing communities requires key pieces.

Every town and village will improve if you plant the right seeds, fertilise and water them. Like old trees, communities have many branches and roots that help them to grow.

Dreams are the forerunners to community growth.

It can be challenging to start growing communities, especially if they have stagnated for an extended period. Finding an appropriate starting point can be even more difficult.

If you’re growing a community, be prepared for competition and resistance, lots of it. Every year, more people have more ideas on how to do it than ever across all community sectors.

You will face many issues, from the local government’s inertia to established companies in their comfort zones and young and hungry people willing to take bold risks and experiment aggressively.

How will you grow a more prosperous town or village in such an environment? How can you drive sustainable growth? I do not want to put you off community development; I merely wish to remind you that there are no guarantees. Anyone can get into your space and start doing ‘stuff’, so you better be ready to compete.

Will your ideas help growing communities?

Validate your assumptions and ensure the activities and projects you choose resonate positively, so community members will want to buy into them.

Since the 1920s, the pilot has been used to mean ‘serving as a prototype’. As far back as the 1600s, pilot meant ‘to guide’. A pilot episode is used to prototype a TV show, and based on how the audience reacts, it will guide the producer’s next steps. The studio will greenlight the show for a season when the reaction is good. If it’s a flop, they’ll cut the show or rework it for another test run.

If you have the expertise, ideas and opportunities you want to turn into supporting community growth, it makes sense to validate them by looking for some initial feedback first.

Your job is to sort through the baggage of the past and the aspirations for the future. 

Chicken or egg problems: growing communities

Every community has its share of baggage. The baggage includes people who want to maintain the status quo, people who don’t care, and inadequate community leadership. On the one hand, you have supply issues; on the other hand, you have demand issues.

Many people love to complain about how competitive their community is without discussing how important competition is to innovation. Innovation is much more accessible with modern technology, which introduces game-changing products and services in every community. As a consequence, towns and villages will only become more competitive.

If you don’t know how to compete, your community will decline, while others who are aware will thrive. Prosperous communities are those where sound community design principles are applied, and entrepreneurial management is involved in the ecosystem. Ad hoc approaches to community development have limited effectiveness.

If you are going to play the game, play to win. Learn to deal with and overcome the barriers and frustrations you will encounter.

Quotable quotes

“Communities, businesses and non-profit organisations thrive when people think entrepreneurially”. Peter Sergeant

“Entrepreneurship is not just finding solutions; it’s more about making things happen”. Peter Sergeant