We’ve been asking economic developers for the last several months how they are using AI. The answers range from not using it at all to using it every day to support a wide range of tasks. Those who say they are not using AI, quickly followed up that they want to learn how to use it. Many said that even though they are not personally using AI, others in their office are. Below are the results of our completely unscientific survey (asking economic developers at networking events) about how economic developers are using AI. We also share how our firm is using AI, and no, we are not using it to write your next strategic plan.
How Economic Developers are using AI
- Content Development – EDOs are using AI to develop marketing content for social media, blogs, and eblasts. Marketing staff are using AI as “creative assistants” to help write external marketing messages. Often when asked how their EDO is using AI, the local developer would say “our marketing manager is using it.”
- Research and Data – Researchers are using AI the same way they use Google and other search engines to support research for RFIs, industry reports, and community data. You can get advice on sources for data, published reports, and new ways to track and describe community characteristics.
- Competitive/Comparative Analysis – A few economic developers are using AI to learn about the places with which their community regularly competes. Try asking AI, “what are the economic advantages of doing business in (fill in the name of your staunchest competitor)?”. You could also learn about nearby metros that might offer opportunities for collaboration or joint tactics.
If your EDO is not using AI, ask your allies how they are using it. Utilities are using AI to monitor grid systems. Transportation departments are using the technology to predict maintenance and safety issues. Site selections consultants are using AI to analyze large amounts of data.
How Creative EDC is using AI
We are using AI similar to EDOs, like an assistant, and in other ways related to the nuances of our consulting work.
- Summarizing information – Often, we read lengthy articles and reports to stay abreast of emerging sectors and economic information. Sometimes we ask AI to summarize articles for efficiency.
- Taking meeting notes – Zoom’s AI Summary feature is an easy way to take meeting notes. We have found that even though the summaries need a scan and some editing for accuracy, it saves time compared to manual note taking.
- Wordsmithing like a thesaurus – Since part of our work is producing complex technical writing, we find ourselves asking AI for a “fun” or “less technical” or “easy to understand” way to say something that we have written in a procedural or methodological way. We usually don’t use the AI direct output; rather, the output sparks a different way to think about how to present complex information.
- Research assistant – We also ask AI questions similar to ones we ask Google. We like to see if there are better sources for information than our standard go-to.
- Seeing a place differently – Like economic developers who are using AI to research competitors, we use it to see how others perceive a place. Site selectors, company representatives, and entrepreneurs are asking AI what it is like to live, work, and do business in a place. We want to know what “story” it is saying about a place.
We are not using AI to write strategic plans or analyze sites or facilitate EDO retreats. We asked it to write an economic development strategic plan once to see what the output would be. It was very generic – like it was written for AnyWhereVille. Ahh…nice to have some job security!
How you can use AI in your personal life
Using an AI tool as a research and productivity assistant for your personal life may be a good way to test out AI tools. Here are a few ways we have used AI to shortcut activities ‘after hours’.
- Meal Planning – Feed ChatGPT a list of ingredients you have on-hand and ask for recipe suggestions to use up all the produce you bought.
- Vacation planning – Ask for a time-specific itinerary in a foreign city, indicating the time of year and general interests of the participants to generate a rough draft of attractions and places to visit on vacation. We’ve used it for familiar travel destinations, too, and found some neat things we overlooked on previous trips.
- Exercise – Ask for a specific-distance route from a point to change up your walking or running route – or ask for an exercise regimen targeted at specific muscle groups (include age and gender).
- Gift giving – Learn what the latest trends are for specific demographics to guide gift-giving for tweens or others. This helped out a lot during the holidays when general internet searches resulted in thousands of answers to sift through.
In general, ChatGPT offers a terrific shortcut for research, reading, and organizing information with applications for any industry and for your personal life. Right now, the productivity gains we are realizing from AI are small. However, as with any assistant, investing time in training to improve accuracy will result in more productivity gains. So, if you have been on the sideline, jump in the deep end. Ask ChatGPT or Gemini to write your next investor eblast or social media post. Ask it to help you find the obscure data point in an RFI. Ask it why a business would locate in a competing community. Have some fun with it, too. Get to work on your next vacation itinerary. A little daydreaming at your desk can be good for productivity too!