Business Attraction Management
Business Attraction Management in Nordic Cities and Regions
Partnership of 22 cities, regions and “Invest in” organisations in six countries in Northern Europe.
March 2015-February 2016.
Business Attraction Management in Nordic Cities and Regions (BAM)
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.
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 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). See Publications to download the free handbook.
Services included:
- 15 case studies of best practices in business attraction and investment promotion (7 comprehensive cases and 8 “mini cases”)
- One internal survey with all project partners with a view to understand needs and fine tune project aims.
- One external survey with national and regional IPAs in Northern Europe.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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