What does the Lehigh Valley Economic Development Corporation stand for? What are its principles and values? And what are its goals moving forward?

Those are among the questions answered by the LVEDC 2014-2017 Strategic Plan, a comprehensive three-year strategy that was adopted by the organization’s board this summer.

The strategic plan outlines our mission, vision, values, principles, priorities and a set of 20 specific initiatives that the LVEDC will pursue over the next three years.

Those initiatives fall under four different categories: development, marketing, finance and administration/stakeholders. Here’s a link to the full strategic plan.

Over the upcoming weeks, we will be presenting a series of articles delving deeper into the initiatives within each of those four categories.

But for now, here is a quick guide to some of the basics from our strategic plan:

OUR MISSION: The mission of the LVEDC is to market the economic assets of the Lehigh Valley and to serve as a regional shared services and resource center to help businesses to come, grow and start here.

OUR VISION: Our vision is of a Lehigh Valley with a diverse economic base in healthy cities and strong suburbs that enable businesses to grow and flourish in order to create jobs and opportunities for all our residents.

OUR PRIORITIES:

• Targeted industry marketing
• Workforce preparedness
• City and urban core revitalization
• Access to capital
• Shared services resource center
• Enhancing resources
• Build councils to engage

Visit the strategic plan itself to read about our values, principles and future initiatives.

The strategic plan was preceded by an in-depth Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats (SWOT) analysis the LVEDC embarked upon last year, seeking in part to learn how the organization is viewed by its major customers, stakeholders and partners, and what they see as its core role.

The LVEDC also engaged Garner Economics, an Atlanta-based economic consultant, to review the organization’s operations, assess the Lehigh Valley’s economic strengths and weaknesses relative to other comparable regions, and to recommend improvements for a new economic development strategy.

The Garner Economics report served as a foundation for the development of the sets of initiatives defined by the strategic plan. Check out the LVEDC e-newsletter next week for the next installment in a series providing more specific detail about those initiatives.