A Proposed Quantification of Performance of Rural Development Agencies

In Chapter 5, the author goes further to propose a more concrete development of some new notions that may be suitable to contemporary economic developments acknowledging the significance of dissemination and particularly quantification of financial innovation in fostering rural growth and development. If a reader realizes that it doesn't all boil down to finance, then an entirely different sort of basic connection of management elements is possible, from which our ordinary concepts of social-economic development are approached in a much deeper system. In Chapter 5, the concept of financial innovation is introduced in a general way but also with specific examples discussed mathematically and qualitatively. In addition to the measurement of growth of rural population and entrepreneurship, the chapter has also presented the author's developed indices for quantification of performance coupled with measurement of financial innovation.

Proposed Explanations of Theoretical Concepts of Local Rural Development

In Chapter 4, the author profiled and illustrated rural regions as a potential peripheral economy. The specific context is looking at the use of this theory in a complex way by upgrading these regions innovatively in order to significantly contribute to economic development through dynamic developmental operations and strategic orientation of their businesses. Analyzed and compared are concepts and regions in terms of mutual cooperation, growth, and leadership role of founders. The chapter is concerned with making the first steps in the process of developing consistent concepts of local rural development for overcoming an alienated and peripheral economy. The developmental approach has, from the beginning, been that the concepts concerning rural development and the great potential of entrepreneurship are in a continuous process of advancement, and that one may have to start with ideas that are merely some sort of improvement over what has thus far been available to go on from there to ideas that are more profound.

Critical Importance of Entrepreneurship in Local Economic Development

In Chapter 1, the author considers the overall evolving ontological significance of entrepreneurship as a mindset in structural developmental change facilitating both local and rural economic development. Here it is illustrated that entrepreneurship itself is demanding new, non-divisive, non-mechanical developmental approaches to local economic development, in the sense that the current concepts which recognize this approach need to be fostered holistically in order to work well in modern economics. It is further conceived that both in local economic development and entrepreneurship, proposals based on indivisible developmental wholeness offer a much more effective way of approaching the general social-economic and rural reality. In subsequent chapters it will be further shown that rural regions can in fact greatly benefit from these notions. The author indicates that some regions are not able to attract investment and ensure sustainable development while regional and rural development agencies with entrepreneurial thinking offer many available strategic options.

Development of an Institutional Model of Organizational Structure of Rural Development Agencies

In Chapter 6, the author uses modeling to advocate and develop a new institutional model of organizational structure of rural development agencies that should maintain close collaborative links with both SMEs and local-regional development agencies. The concrete context of the chapter addresses different scenarios and models for innovatively conceived rural and entrepreneurial development. The author structures the departments of potential rural development agencies in improving their sophisticated organizational culture and strategy and places significance on management. Establishment of rural development agencies represents only a starting point for further development of these regions and their SMEs. Such a model of institutional and material support to the development of rural entrepreneurship, of course, requires a proactive approach of rural leaders and managers in further learning and successful mastering of the basics of rural development and management. This chapter completes the second section of the book.

Structured Procedures of Establishing Regional SME Agencies

In modern business conditions there are a large number of limiting factors for the development of small and medium-sized enterprises. These factors can be both internal and external and are treated both as opportunities and threats. Given the need to overcome many barriers in the development of entrepreneurship in order to stimulate the improvement of business performance of existing SMEs, one of the forms of extending business support is the so-called entrepreneurial infrastructure within which the key institutions are also the regional enterprise and development agencies. In Chapter 3, the author proposes structured procedures of establishing regional SME agencies as precursors of regional development and rural agencies. Proposed is a set of forms in an underlying universal process of strategic planning for these institutions having rural development in hindsight. The discussed regional SME agencies can essentially be replicated on other support infrastructure of this kind. This chapter completes the first section of the book.

Regional SME and Development Agencies

In Chapter 2, the author shared research evidence on the role of regional SME and development agencies, which are profiled as factors of SME support, regional development, and improvement of competitiveness. The author inquires whether it is possible to experiment with new institutional concepts with a basic role given to the agencies as facilitators of social-economic development reaching out locally, regionally, globally, and in particular, rurally. Such institutions have as their substance a series of development interventions that flow and merge into each other without sharp divisions that might inhibit entrepreneurship and, as will be seen later, rural development. What is proposed here is not a new institution as such but, rather, a new fashion of using the existing development infrastructure. The author develops this approach as experimentation with institutions, which is meant mainly to provide an insight into the fragmentary function of the common social-economic development rather than to propose a totally new method of developing an economy at the local and rural level.

The Development of a New Relationship Between the Rural and the Entrepreneurial

The seventh and last chapter of the book is a more substantial and summarized presentation of the new proposed relationship between the rural and the entrepreneurial. This leads to an indication of potential lines along which it may be feasible to fulfill the compelling challenge to develop new sets of specific developmental notions for future rural development. The most important finding of this chapter belongs to the illustrated electromagnetic role of development agencies, which are considered to be the linking pin of the new proposed rural-entrepreneurial relationship. Radical changes in economic development have always involved the perception of new orders and attention to the development of new rural ways of using entrepreneurship that are appropriate to the development of such order. The author dedicates this chapter to a discussion of certain features of both rural and entrepreneurial aspects of economic development that can help provide some insight into what is meant by perception and communication of a new sustainable rural order.