Executive Summary

This collaborative blueprint is a product of collaboration between the Kentucky Cabinet for Economic Development (KCED) and the Kentucky Association for Economic Development (KAED). This blueprint is by Kentucky’s economic developers, for Kentucky’s economic developers. It lays out an economic development blueprint that economic developers and their stakeholders could follow to spur growth in Kentucky over the next five years. The blueprint was not designed to cover policy areas, or other topics that fall outside economic developers’ primary areas of influence.

The blueprint emphasizes a set of priorities, including five priority sectors and five priority enablers that will help realize growth in these priority sectors, where economic developers may choose to align, prioritize, and act to generate growth for the Commonwealth of Kentucky. These ten priorities also reflect how the Commonwealth’s diverse communities can contribute to advancing Kentucky’s prosperity in their unique yet still interdependent ways.

This blueprint builds upon the foundations of Kentucky’s recent momentum, including historic wins in future-facing sectors such as electric vehicles. It looks toward sustaining this momentum by providing a guide for Kentucky’s economic development professionals, in coordination with KCED and KAED, based upon data, insights, and experience in Kentucky and more broadly.

The blueprint also highlights how the role played by economic developers varies by priority. Economic developers will take the lead in identifying and delivering specific opportunities, including developing state, regional, and local priorities, specific strategies around site development, and assembling incentive packages, at the local and state levels to best enable success and attractive incentive packages. In other areas, their role will be more indirect. They will help convene and support other professionals who are recognized as the most expert and accountable in their domains, such as workforce and community development practitioners. Economic developers can thus play a critical role as the essential collaborators who bring together stakeholders to deliver results in the five priority sectors and five priority enablers across Kentucky’s diverse regions.

Therefore, this blueprint seeks to foster clear ownership and defined collaboration to accelerate Kentucky’s economic development.