Part of the rules of the 'New' Economy is that the talented can live anywhere in the world they want... which forces your community to ask, "Why would someone choose to live here?". Former growth and recruitment strategies were based on recruiting industries to supply the people who lived in your community jobs. If your community competed based on cheap labor, no unions, lax environmental regulations, and low taxes, you are starting the game behind others in the quest for talent.
Tim Ferris coined the term 'lifestyle design' is his 2007 book, The 4-Hour Workweek. While the title is off-putting to most "professionals", (frankly the title is not accurate, Ferris himself works many more than 4 hours a week), but many of the concepts are very important for communities to understand. Young people today recognize that the 'deferred life-plan' model of high school, college, good job with pension, then retirement is no longer a model that works. Ferris does a remarkable job of laying out alternatives and young people (along with Ferris' marketing genius) have made the book a perennial NYTimes best seller. Google lifestyle design, and you'll find hundreds, if not thousands of blog post and websites from very talent young people living all over the world like - Cody McKibben, Rolf Potts, the aforementioned Mr. Ferris, and many others. Here's a compilation of some of lifestyle design resources - click here
How will communities compete for talent? How have the roles changed for developing talent? They've been completely turned on their head and the institutions and communities that recognized this first have a distinct competitive advantage.
But, it's not too late for your community to catch up.
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