How do you become a world leading Investment Promotion Agency in 2025? This is the question we asked some of the most renowned city and regional investment promotion agencies (IPAs) in the world in collaboration with Copenhagen Capacity and European Talent Mobility Forum. Based on initial research by Future Place Leadership, we aligned trends we saw in the market, with expert insights directly from the industry including these seven organizations: Berlin Partner, Brainport Development, Copenhagen Capacity, Helsinki Business Hub, Invest Stockholm, Montreal International, and Tel Aviv Global.

The challenge

Copenhagen Capacity is an award winning economic development agency and by many industry peers considered to be Champions League. Yet to win such a tournament each year (to use the soccer analogy), one can not rest on its laurels. Hence the organisation is always keen to understand, what is happening in the world related to the business of attracting investors, that one should adopt its strategy to, or completely change direction to accommodate. The challenge of this assignment was exactly that: Understanding the future market and providing recommendations on how to adapt strategically and operationally already now.

We identified 4 key questions as guiding principles for the research and interviews:

1. What would it take to be the best Investment Promotion Agency by 2025?
2. What do you need to do in the next five years to maintain a leading position?
3. What are the respective roles of FDI, talent attraction, and placemaking? And how do they all work together?
4. What trends really matter to our industry?

The solution

This white paper introduces eight recommendations for the future of investment promotion. Some relate to a changing world and economies, with technologies and the environmental crisis deeply affecting our ways of living, consuming, working, and producing. In reaction or to  accommodate these trends, the role of Investment promotion agencies has also started to change. Instead of being the “salespeople” of their cities, regions, or nations, they are working strategically with public and private actors to facilitate the local economic ecosystems. This require specific knowledge on the priority industries, but also knowledge of actors to connect them.

The result  

The eight recommendations are:

1. Talents are your biggest asset
2. Be a digital infrastructure leader
3. Soft landing matters to investors
4. This is an emotional business
5. IPAs’ skill-sets will change
6. A clear and distinct value proposition
7. Sustainability moves to the forefront
8. Diversify the investment mix

Download the report for free here!

Any questions, or something we can help you with? Get in touch!

More on the topic

Find our free handbooks & white papers on Investment Promotion in our handbook library!

The post Copenhagen, Denmark -The Future of Investment Promotion: How to Become a World Leading Investment Promotion Agency in 2025? first appeared on Future Place Leadership.

The competition for investments, talent, visitors and public resources is no doubt intensifying between places – and the winners have been the capitals and other urban centres. This is the backdrop against which the Norwegian region Vestfold & Telemark decided to launch their Regional Development project “Working smarter together”. The process focuses on innovating how different regional stakeholders can out-smart the competition with better collaboration in the future – and secure growth and opportunities for both its current and future residents and companies.

The challenge

Smart collaboration, innovation, commitment and creativity are the desired key words in the work to strengthen the attractiveness of Vestfold & Telemark when it comes to green transition, development and growth and to attract investment, tourists and talent. The client asked us to develop a methodology to use in betterment of collaboration between the municipality and the wider range of different actors in the ecosystem.

The solution

Adapting Design Thinking into the core of the collaboration between different stakeholders. The aim is for actors in the region to be able to use a baseline framework for different processes with a concrete toolbox to develop prototypes for future development work where several municipalities or actors work together. All of this is part of the same goal: To work smarter together.

The result  

“Work smarter together” offers a common language for development work and a solid set of methods to rely on, a toolbox.

This framework for economic development through a Design Thinking approach has its core in investigating what the underlying problems are, explore different solutions and continuously test proposed solutions on target groups or the end user. Thus, both the problem and the solution change when new insights are gained. We call the process we have developed for Working Smarter Together the Triple Diamond, because it functions as a framework with three subsequent phases:

1. Understand: an exploratory start to ensure a correct understanding of the user’s needs or challenge.
2. Create: With an understanding of the actual need or challenge, we can “brainstorm” and find ways to solve the challenge.
3. Deliver: With one or more proposed solutions, we have developed prototypes to be tested, improved and finally launched

Any questions, or something we can help you with? Get in touch!

More on the topic

Find our free handbooks & white papers on Investment Promotion in our handbook library!

The post Vestfold & Telemark, Norway – Framework for Economic Development Through Design Thinking first appeared on Future Place Leadership.

Future Place Leadership was hired by Invest in Skåne, the regional investment promotion agency of Region Skåne, Sweden, to help the 12 municipalities of the Malmö-Lund region to develop a model for regional cooperation, as well as help the municipalities and the region develop their value propositions to investors.

The Malmö-Lund region is one of the main economic hotspots of Sweden, and an important contributor to the economic success of the Greater Copenhagen region. 

We helped Invest in Skåne and the municipalities to develop their skills in investment promotion, and to develop a well-packaged value proposition for each municipality as well as for the region as a whole. Last but not least, we helped the region develop a regional cooperation model for investment promotion, including jointly agreed processes and policies for both reactive and proactive promotion.   

The challenge

True regional cooperation in investment promotion between the municipalities at core of the region – the Malmö-Lund region – has been lacking. Many of the municipalities also lacked a comprehensively described and well-packaged value proposition targeting the desired investor segments.

The solution

We helped Invest in Skåne and the municipalities to tackle the challenge by:

1. Improving their skills in investment promotion, through training and coaching
2. Helping them to develop a well-packaged value proposition for each municipality as well as for the region as a whole, through coaching and pitching training  
3. Facilitating the development of regional cooperation model for investment promotion, including jointly agreed processes and policies for both reactive and proactive promotion.    

The result 

The client testifies that all the municipalities have reached a higher level of maturity when it comes to investment promotion activities – and that the municipalities have developed a higher degree of trust between each other which facilitates exchange of information, sharing of leads and dialogue on new opportunities. All the municipalities as well as the region as a whole also have updated value propositions and acquired learnings on how to create and update the value promotions in the future. Finally, the region now has a cooperation model for both proactive and reactive investment promotion.    

Any questions, or something we can help you with? Get in touch!

More on the topic

Find our free handbooks & white papers on Investment Promotion in our handbook library!

The post Skåne and Malmö-Lund region, Sweden – Model for Attracting More Investments first appeared on Future Place Leadership.

For example, arranging a process with business clusters to identify areas where the region can develop oneself in a particular area (smart specialization). Working with multiple stakeholders is key when making the value proposition of your place more effective and more clear.

The challenge still remains of course to make full use of the methods. It is a cross-sectorial and multi-organisational change management challenge. Things take time. But the vector is looking good!

Any questions, or something we can help you with? Get in touch!

More on the topic

Find our free handbooks & white papers on Business Attraction at our handbook library!

The post Telemark, Norway – Business Attraction Management Strategy first appeared on Future Place Leadership.

Find the handbook and download it for free here: Business Attraction Management in Nordic Cities and Regions (BAM)

The project was a Nordic development project focusing on the next generation business attraction and investment promotion practices. The collaboration project aimed at identifying and developing new tools and strategies for investment promotion. The new tools and strategies were co-created with the project’s more than 60 participants, representing 22 organisations from six countries in the Nordics and Baltics. The project eventually laid a foundation on our Business Attraction Management model, which can be used as a guideline for building a BAM strategy pretty much everywhere.

What is Business Attraction Management?

BAM is a holistic approach to strategies, processes and activities aiming at attracting and making full use of inward investment activity. It is based on the unique, localised competencies, resources and networks of the place –  the ecosystem of business activity. A total of 15 case studies were performed, focusing on, for example, how to attract venture capital, start-ups and entrepreneurial talent, how to attract different types of business such as data centres, logistics and ICT businesses, how to build ambassador networks that help attract new businesses and how to use you challenges as a place as a basis for business attraction.

The operating model of the project itself was designed to ensure a process that creates outputs that meet the demands of the participating city, regional and investment promotion organisations.

The outcome of the project

The project resulted in the “Handbook on Business Attraction Management for Cities and Regions”, which presents new strategies, tools and activities for successful business attraction (published in February 2016).

The project activities included:

1. 15 case studies of best practices in business attraction and investment promotion (7 comprehensive cases and 8 “mini cases”)
2. One internal survey with all project partners with a view to understand needs and fine tune project aims.
3. One external survey with national and regional IPAs in Northern Europe.
4. Three separate two-day work meetings gathering between 55 and 70 participants each in different Nordic locations, with group discussions, presentations and co-creation workshopsthat fed into the process of creating the final outputs.
5. Individual meetings and teleconferences with all participants in order to understand their current work mode and future needs and adapting and testing the final outputs of the project to these needs.
6. Four training sessions, in four different Nordic countries on how to use the handbook and its main tools and strategies, to which all the project partners could invite their main regional stakeholders in investment attraction.

The 60 participants of the project represented 22 cities or regional partnerships in six countries:

• BusinessOulu, Finland
• LADEC, Lahti Region Development, Finland
• Cursor, Kotka-Hamina region, Finland
• Kouvola Innovation, Finland
• Imatra Region, Finland
• Silkeborg municipality, Denmark
• ’Triangle Region’ (Trekantområdet), Denmark
• Buskerud Country Authority, Norway
• Kongsberg Region, Norway
• Invest in Telemark, Norway
• Olofström Municipality/Netport Science Park, Sweden
• Falun-Borlänge Region, Sweden
• City of Halmstad, Sweden
• Laholm Municipality, Sweden
• Kalmar Region/Kalmar Science Park, Sweden
• East Sweden Business Region, Sweden
• City of Umeå, Sweden
• City of Örnsköldsvik, Sweden
• Business Region Örebro, Sweden
• Uppsala Region, Sweden
• Invest Lithuania/Lithuanian regions
• Enterprise Estonia/Estonian regions

Any questions, or something we can help you with? Get in touch!

More on the topic

Find our free handbooks & white papers on Business Attraction at our handbook library!

The post Business Attraction Management in Nordic Cities and Regions first appeared on Future Place Leadership.