September General Meeting:
Attracting, Incubating, and Holding Businesses
Guest Speaker: Carol Sanford, CEO of InterOctave, Inc.
Topic: NextGen Sustainability—Using the concept of regeneration to build and sustain businesses and communities
Regeneration is a concept with a track record for attracting, incubating, and holding businesses through up and down market cycles and it creates significant business growth.
For a neighborhood, regeneration leads to discovering the patterns that represent its ‘Story of Place’ (TM). For a business, regeneration means discovering its unique identity. Regeneration avoids layering on generic templates and fosters that which is distinctive and “attracting,” thereby drawing companies, talent, and buyers to it.
Most amazingly, when business and economic development are integrated, there is a multiplier effect that tends to future-proof and competitor-proof both the neighborhoods and the businesses in them.
- Five things you can do to simultaneously improve the economic health of your business and neighborhood economics
- Why not everything “local” is sustainable (and vice versa) and how to “do local” regeneratively
- Stories of three businesses/communities that have proven the effectiveness of simultaneous regeneration.
The businesses to be discussed are:
Seventh Generation Inc. in Burlington, VT;
Brattleboro Coop, in Brattleboro, VT; and
DuPont Inc. in Wilmington DE/Delisle, MS. The community that will share the spotlight is
McAllen, TX, for a downtown neighborhood development project (residential, commercial, and open space) that stabilized and grew businesses at double their typical rate.
About the Speaker:
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*Meeting Location: REI -
222 Yale Ave. N, 2nd Floor Conference Room
Contact (206) 547-2577 or info@SLUChamber.org to learn more. Non-Members welcome!
Typical Meeting Structure:
11:30 am to 12:00 - Network/Eat/Hello
12:00 to 12:10 - Introductions and announcements
12:10 to 12:45 pm - Main Program
12:45 to 1:00 - Questions, Raffle
- End of Meeting -
**Preregistrations are encouraged. Walk-ins (member and non-members) will be charged $20 at the door cash or check**Your email address must be associated with a member profile to receive member discounts. Please email info@SLUchamber.org if your email is not recognized by our system.
Meeting Location Provided by
REI