The next business investment won't look like the last one

Economic developers have spent decades getting better at measuring local economies. We can tell you which industries are growing, which pay the highest wages and how our communities compare with competing markets. The data are better, the tools more sophisticated and the target-sector lists more precise.

Yet much of that information tells us surprisingly little about where the next major business investment will land.

A community can have a thriving technology cluster without knowing which companies are preparing to expand. It can boast a highly educated workforce while thousands of residents commute elsewhere for jobs that match their skills. It can spend years recruiting corporate headquarters without recognizing that companies have changed what a headquarters looks like.

We've seen these tensions in our work with communities across the country. The research that explains an economy's past performance is essential. But investment decisions are being shaped by forces that rarely appear in a traditional cluster analysis: acquisitions, new technologies, changing customer markets and the movement of capital.

The headquarters deal is changing

Consider corporate relocation. For years, economic development organizations pursued the big headquarters move, with its promise of thousands of jobs and a signature office building.

Those opportunities still exist. But CBRE's 2026 analysis of headquarters relocations points to a more complicated market. Among publicly announced moves in 2025, consolidation, portfolio optimization and mergers and acquisitions were the most frequently cited reasons, appearing in 34 announcements. Labor availability appeared in 24. Lower-cost technology talent appeared in only three.

Companies are also reconsidering how much space they need and where their employees work. Some are moving within the same metropolitan area. Others are establishing regional offices or specialized operations while keeping their principal headquarters elsewhere.

For communities, this changes the competition. A company may never move its global headquarters, but its next engineering center, customer operations team or regional leadership office could be available. An acquisition may reopen decisions about where corporate functions belong long before anyone hires a site selector.

Economic developers who only follow announced relocation projects are entering the conversation late. We need relationships with the investors, corporate leaders and existing employers making those decisions.

The jobs are changing, too

Artificial intelligence is making the relationship between investment and employment more complicated.

The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects that data scientist employment will grow 33.5% between 2024 and 2034, while information security analysts will grow 28.5%. Other occupations face changing demand as companies automate tasks and reorganize operations.

That creates a difficult question for a profession that has long measured success through jobs announced and capital invested.

What happens when a company invests more money but needs fewer workers? Or when a relatively small engineering operation brings higher-paying careers and more opportunities for local businesses than a much larger administrative office?

Those distinctions should influence which projects we pursue and how we evaluate public incentives.

They should also change how we think about talent. In our work, we've seen communities focus heavily on recruiting workers from elsewhere while overlooking residents already doing specialized work in neighboring cities. If those residents have the skills a growing company needs, attracting the work may be more valuable than attracting more people.

The industries themselves are changing as well. Semiconductors offer a useful example. Communities have competed fiercely for fabrication plants, but the investment extends well beyond chip production. SEMI forecasts global semiconductor equipment sales will reach $229.5 billion by 2028.

For a region with experienced engineers and established manufacturers, equipment development, testing or specialized suppliers may offer a stronger opportunity than another enormous fabrication plant. Those investments require different workers, facilities and infrastructure. They may also create more opportunities for local firms.

A target industry tells us where to look. It rarely tells us which investment to pursue.

A different kind of investment playbook

At CivicSol, we're bringing these questions into our business attraction work. We still start with industry clusters, workforce analysis and competitive benchmarking. But we're looking more closely at corporate investment plans, capital markets, emerging technologies and the decisions that create demand for new operations.

We want to know which companies are preparing to grow, what business functions they need and whether a community can accommodate them. A promising robotics company is of little use to a recruitment pipeline if it needs technical space that does not exist. A major manufacturing prospect cannot move forward without a credible power-delivery schedule.

These are practical questions. They should shape which companies economic development staff contact on Monday morning and which investments local leaders prepare for over the next several years.

They also require choices. Every community has limited land, infrastructure capacity and public resources. A large capital investment may generate relatively few permanent jobs. A smaller operation may bring higher wages, new suppliers or an anchor tenant for a struggling business district. Communities need to understand those tradeoffs before a prospect arrives.

The next time an economic development organization updates its business attraction strategy, it should go beyond asking which industries it wants to grow. Which companies are making investment decisions? What work are they adding? What will their workers need? And why should that investment happen here?

If we cannot answer those questions, another community may already be having the conversation with the company we hope to attract.

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