Experiences in LED

Understanding LED as an incremental process includes looking at it as a constant learning process. New situations, ideas, opportunities and threats challenge the local stakeholders and their LED management structure every day and produce innovative thinking, which, regardless if the decisions taken prove to be successful or not, generates experience and learning. Companies learn how to produce better and in a more efficient way. Various local stakeholders learn about the actors, the structure and evolutionary pattern of the local economy, learn about opportunities to stimulate upgrading in the local economy, and the tools necessary to do that.

Learning processes and mechanisms are important for all different activity levels and actors of an LED process. Facilitating the emergence of a learning culture and the adequate learning mechanisms at all these levels is crucial to long-term success in LED.

Capturing, analysing and communicating these lessons learnt helps to repeat success stories and prevents the replication of mistakes. It builds a local knowledge base to constantly improve the quality of the LED process and its initiatives, and strengthens the area’s competitiveness. In this section we differentiate between case studies and good/best practices from the undertaken LED initiatives.