According to Ed Morrison, Economic Policy Advisor at Purdue University, “It’s not our grandparents’ economy anymore.” And until we recognize this, we run the risk of beating a dead horse in our economic development efforts.

Our grandparents’ economy is what built this country.  Reduced to the simplest level, it involved moving a lot of raw materials to manufacturing centers and finished products to consumers.

That’s of course what the ag economy still does – we ship huge amounts of grain and livestock from rural areas every year.  And while there will always be a place for this sort of economic activity, it appears to be receding as our primary economic engine.

Our “grandparents’ economy” was/is hierarchical.  A CEO worked with a board of directors to plan strategy.  It was then up to middle managers and workers to implement this strategy.  Such an approach closely parallels the command structure of the military, a structure that is essential to managing large numbers of troops.

Yet as American soldiers demonstrated during WWII, soldiers who can make decisions on their own have an advantage over soldiers who have to wait for orders.  Morrison sees in this example a key to future economic development.

Morrison had demonstrated that networking can be used effectively to develop strategy and holds an advantage in that it breaks down the traditional barrier between a small group of thinkers and a large group of doers.  This allows much more flexibility and gives the doers a direct say in deciding what should be done and how.

Morrison believes that networking can lead to better strategic decisions.  He advocates bringing people from different fields together to talk.  He says the leader of this discussion should “lead from the rear” by asking questions that stimulate thinking.  He says once a group begins to understand the various assets each member brings, both directly and indirectly in the form of other networks they belong to, the group begins to recognize just how much they can do.  He says then it becomes a matter of figuring out what they should do since often the potential the group possesses could lead them to undertake many projects.

It’s still unclear (to me, at least) what our “grandchildren’s economy” – an economy driven by networking rather than hierarchical command and control processes – will look like.  But Morrison believes it is already rapidly developing because of the Internet, and that we can smooth the generational transitional process by effectively using the assets of our grandparents’ economy to build the economy of our grandchildren.

Morrison believes that this network decision-making process, which he terms “Strategic Doing,” will do much to help us utilize our existing assets – both knowledge and money – in developing our grandchildren’s economy.  He says we already have what we need to create a new economy, and by bringing people together from a range of fields to collectively apply their abilities and resources in addressing challenges, we can revitalize the economies of rural areas more easily than we currently realize.