Prosperity SWOT Analysis

Betty Herrmann

Tyler Hewitt

Emily Lund

Heilee O’Quinn

Econ 309, Spring 2003 (Prof. Hackett)

Strengths

• All seven major cities within the county worked together to create the Comprehensive Economic Development Plan, Prosperity Report. The cities wanting to work together portrays that the goal of each city is to better not only themselves, but the county as a whole. It demonstrates how interdependent the cities within Humboldt County are. Because the county as a whole is such an isolated area this interdependence is necessary.
• The values that Prosperity is looking to uphold are based on what the community wants and believes in. There is a strong common ground between all the values, such as natural beauty, small town feeling, clean water, etc. The strategy was built around input from the community and the businesses within it. Georgianna Wood of the Arcata Economic Development Corporation noted that Prosperity works to maintain a certain quality of life that the community desires while allowing people to be prosperous.
• Identification of the base industries and putting them into clusters allows the county to focus on developing the key industries that are pulling money into the area. This allows for focus on the competitive advantages that these industries hold. One of these advantages is our forward-looking perspective and development of goods and technologies that are in line with this perspective. For example organic farming and the Schatz Energy lab’s research on hydrogen fuel cells.
• Industry needs have been identified which allows for each industry to take steps towards achieving their potential and improving on their deficiencies.

Weaknesses

• There is no focus on individual city development. There may be differing values between each of the cities and creating one report could detract from the values that the individual cities are trying to uphold and maintain. For example Arcata may be trying to promote sustainable development and practices and the Prosperity Network does not go into whether or not the firms within the cluster are environmentally friendly or hold a sustainable focus. This is due to that people have differing views on what is sustainable.
• The identification of the competitive advantages of the county is not comprehensive enough. The list given appears more to be a list of incentives for living and conducting business within the area. The strategy identifies that there are barriers to business growth and development and that there needs to be work to remove them but it is not outlined how this may occur.
• The community input that went behind the development of the strategy may not have been fully representative of the population; therefore it can be construed as biased.
• The report does not address incentives to keep students in the area once they have completed their education. The area is building a great base of skilled workers but there is no way to keep them in the area, so essentially the area is exporting a very valuable resource. And if there are incentives to stay will there be enough jobs available?

Threats

• The global, national, and state’s current state of the economy. This is something the Prosperity Report obviously can have no control over; they can only react.
• Goergianna Wood addressed the possible threat that the collaborative may not function down the road as it does now when new people are filling the current roles. She posed the question, “Does this only work now because of the unique personalities that are involved?”
• The possibility of deteriorating common values held among the cities of the county. There may be conflicting views of how development should occur.
• Big business taking advantage of the reduction of barriers and the growth that the county may experience. Big business may stifle the growth of smaller businesses that help to make up the industry clusters.

Opportunities

· In an effort to reduce imports into the area, which create income leakages, the county can work to build local business and industry that create the goods that the county imports. Engaging in import substitution could lead to a creation of new industry clusters. The county could work together to create an advertising plan to encourage local residents to buy local products. Work can also be done to increase social capital.

· Representatives from each identified cluster could meet together to determine if there are any opportunities for further collaborative efforts. For example, the dairy industry could provide fertilizer at a discount for the agriculture industry. The left over edible agriculture product could then be given back to the dairy industry as food for the livestock.

· Humboldt State University could create a work plan for integrating students with the local community in order to create a further exchange of skills and resources between the school and the surrounding community. This could benefit both the school and the industries within Humboldt County.

· There could be further opportunity for strengthening the businesses that help to make up an industry cluster through the use of microcredit. Microcredit could help to not only build on existing clusters but also help to create new ones as well, such as recreation.