Regional economic developers who don't grasp telecommuting are rowing upstream with one oar and probably moving downstream stern first toward the falls. People who do understand telecommuting need to educate economic developers about the probable future. The link which telecommuting provides to the chain of self-employment, entrepreneurship, small business, growing business and job creation. This process is a less visible form of economic development than attracting a big Pacific Rim electronics firm, but it is much more important, as I'll explain. In one sense, economic development is a happening.
Firms expand or contract, governments tax and spend.
The net result yields a particular path of economic development in a region, whether the region is southern California or eastern Oregon. It just happens. But beyond just watching economic development happen, there are now many local government programs, public-private partnerships, and civic organizations practicing active intervention to make development happen better than it would if left alone. Through intervention, these economic developers try to improve the overall path of a region's economic development from a public interest point of view. A typical focus of economic development intervention is creating more jobs for people who live in a region, or filling up real estate parcels with businesses.