Stay Informed!

By Bill Schweke on 11/09/2010 @ 11:54 AM

Tags: Ideas in Development, Economic Development

There will always be a gap between what really is the case and what we think is true.  And despite the importance and impact of more rigorous methods, more available quantitative data, and the lower costs and greater power of today’s information technologies, there is no way we will eliminate the factor of human insight in making connections and reaching decisions.

Our reading, our experience, our peculiar perspectives and biases, and our autobiography all count in separating those with keen instincts from those without, when it comes to identifying economic development problems and opportunities, devising more relevant, effective, and feasible strategies and managing their implementation.

Moreover, we must avoid letting increasingly sophisticated methodologies determine what’s important to study and evaluate.  There is also a certain point at which the advantages of using more quantitative rigor slows down and then takes a turn in the direction of the negative.  After all, you can study some problems and alternatives to death.  When it comes to almost everything in this world, there comes a time for a leap of faith, albeit while keeping an open mind.

We can only try our best to look at what really happened and listen to the responses of our economic development peers.  Yet, what we want from researchers and evaluators is not utter neutrality: we always will bring into any development challenge our larger commitments, our values, our pet ideas, and past experience.  At the same time, we can still try to be as objective as possible by facing the facts, heeding our critics, being clear about our value premises, and seeking the truth.

Do not ignore good intuition.  Your most intensive inquiries will rarely provide definitive answers.  Furthermore, differences between your “gut” and your most sophisticated studies must be always confronted.  Call it intuition, insight, best judgment, or just plain common sense, these help to frame the entire analysis, to define how you choose to measure key concepts and later to probe and test your data outcomes. 

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