Below is a column by Business Journal publisher Rob Kaiser that pertains to the upcoming “Special Sauce” Power Breakfast on Thursday, March 27. To attend the event, reserve seats now at WilmingtonPowerBreakfast.com.

You may have noticed an alphabet soup of economic development groups floating around our region — WBD, WDI, CEA, CFF, CFEDC, BCEDC, CIE, NCSE and ETC. (Ok, I made up that last one.)

I’ve heard many people express concern about overlapping efforts and confusion about who is responsible for what.

Personally, I’m not concerned about the quantity of groups and individuals working to boost business growth in our region. I’m concerned about what they’re doing.

The ideal image is a variety of people and organizations pulling in the same direction, adding their strength to our side of the tug-of-war we’re engaged in daily with other regions to pull talent and companies into our community.

Instead, I think we look like this — various groups trying to pull the community in different directions, resulting in us not moving forward in any direction.

It seems I’m not alone with this thought.

New Hanover County recently hired Garner Economics to assess the area’s economic development strategy and develop an action plan.

Here are three items that jumped out from a recently released draft report by the group:

• Garner’s assessment of our region’s economic development program — “Low level of cooperation between various organizations involved in economic development activity; Low level of awareness of community regarding economic development.”

• The top action item listed for county and city leaders based on 101 people who participated in focus groups and 897 people who completed an online survey — “Create a shared vision for economic development for the City and County and set priorities based on that vision.”

• There’s been a lack of leadership in executing on a plan to grow — “As a whole, the area’s business development activities appear to be reactive.”

Basically, the report confirms what I’ve long suspected — we’re answering the phone when it rings rather than targeting growth in specific industries and aggressively pursuing them with targeted marketing and incentives.

Take a look at some projects we’ve pursed the past couple years: a tire manufacturing plant, a brewery, a bank, a background check company, a Caterpillar plant and a cold storage facility.

I’m not saying we shouldn’t have pursued these projects. All of them may have been worthwhile and great fits for our community.

But I think what’s missing is focus on a few areas where we may have some strategic advantages. 

Garner suggests we pursue four target areas — life/marine sciences research & development, high value office operations, precision manufacturing and aircraft assembly, modification & maintenance.

These all sound great, but of course, right now it’s just words on paper. The real question is will we have the leadership to move forward?

I’ve long thought our region needs a benevolent dictator — someone who in the best interests of the community will bang heads together to get things done.

However, assuming that dictator doesn’t emerge in the next few days, we’re going to have a Power Breakfast on March 27 with the leaders of some of our alphabet soup organizations including:

• Jim Bradshaw, executive director of BCEDC (Brunswick County Economic Development Corporation)

• Hal Kitchin, chairman of CFF (Cape Fear Future) and 2013 Chairman of the Wilmington Chamber of Commerce board

• Scott Satterfield, CEO of WBD (Wilmington Business Development)

• Lloyd Smith, co-founder of CFEDC (Cape Fear Economic Development Council)

• Robin Spinks, vice chair of CEA (Coalition for Economic Advancement)

We may not bang any heads together, but we will hopefully make progress on how we can boost business activity in our region.

You can reserve seats now at WilmingtonPowerBreakfast.com.

I hope you can join us.

Rob Kaiser is the publisher of Greater Wilmington Business Journal. He can be reached at (910) 343-8600, ext. 204 or [email protected].