About the toolkit    Guide    Strategy    Funding sources    Finding examples    Glossary of terms

Example eWork goal: Playing to your strengths

Recognise the region’s competitive advantages in relation to eWork in order to market and brand the region elsewhere, thereby gaining greater market share of available eWork for the region.

A checklist for developing a strategy to achieve this goal might look something like this:

• Identify and exploit the region’s comparative advantages, including its push and pull factors for eWork, especially:
  • labour: skills, quality, flexibility, stability, price

  • price of premises and land

  • public sector support and incentives

• Don’t forget the region’s:
  • culture and heritage

  • amenity and environment

  • quality of life

  • ‘community’ and social cohesion

• Market the competitive advantages of the region of relevance to client, for example:
  • when attempting to obtain eWork in the global marketplace, the nature of the region itself often is not important, but the quality, price and delivery of eWork can matter very much, as can the presence of specific companies or organisations

  • when attempting to attract inward investment and the movement of functions and people into the region, the nature of the region itself can be very important, as well as quality, price and delivery.

• Promote a positive and attractive vision and image of the region.

• Consider ‘branding’ the region so that, in commercial terms, potential customers or investors have a positive attitude towards the region.

• Identify what the region can do, and wishes to do, in relation to what potential clients and investors want.

• Consider the importance of niche markets.

• Use the out-of-region connections of key people and champions, and don’t forget the diaspora (ie people who have left the region but who could still support it by identifying markets and as sources of expertise and capital).

• Undertake proactive efforts to go for
  • as high value-added eWork as possible (relate this to the type of knowledge eWorkers and companies in the region are able to handle)

  • continuity of work in progress and multiple clients

  • inward investments, where necessary coupled with complementary regional know-how and resources and based on regional comparative advantages.

  • Develop a long-term vision coupled with a strategy for change, so that the region can adapt rapidly and flexibly to new situations as they arise.

  • When drawing up specialised plans, for example business plans, marketing and finance, use ‘experts’ whether from inside or outside the region (such functions can rarely be performed well by amateurs).

  • Encourage out-of-region employers to provide eEmployment in the region through, for example, inward investment or outsourcing initiatives

    Encourage out-of-region customers to purchase regional products and services supplied through eWorking.

  See also regional competitiveness and polarisation, regional comparative advantages in the knowledge economy, regional push and pull factors, knowledge and regional development and job gain and job loss.

    back...

   top of page
   

© 2002, Institute for Employment Studies