Videos

• New playlists on BST and BRE were created in 2022-23 and keep growing. 

• How to conduct an effective  BRE visit for relationship building and capturing good data.

• What's more important in BRE professional practice, relationships or data? https://mediaspace.umn.edu/media/t/1_vc9d6lzl

• What to look for in the UMN BRE course https://mediaspace.umn.edu/media/t/0_pxnhr6l9

Resources for Business Retention + Business Succession

• Webinars for our Business Retention community of practice. z.umn.edu/brewebinars. 

• Benchmarked BRE data. 25 years of survey data aggregated at the community level. z.umn.edu/BREbenchmarks

• Recent examples of BRE and other applied research reports by Community Economics team at UMN  Extension. z.umn.edu/brereports (scroll down to look for regions that have a "Retaining Businesses" link.

• Historical examples of BRE reports and also surveys, instruction manuals, case studies, etc. z.umn.edu/BREexamples (100+ examples here)

• Sample questions for BRE interview guides & surveys. z.umn.edu/BREquestionbank

• Videos of community BREs and how to visit businesses effectively. z.umn.edu/BREvideos for the example videos. Scroll down to Videos.

• Sample interview guide (survey instrument) from UMN Extension's program. z.umn.edu/BreInterviewGuide. 2018 example. Tip: download the document in Microsoft Word. Please give attribution to the University of Minnesota Extension if using it in whole or in part. Thanks. 

Research & Publications

• Retaining Rural Business through Employee Ownership. (2020). Information and research on business conversions to employee cooperatives. z.umn.edu/SellingtoWorkers 

• Enticing Businesses to Stay. The Importance of BRE in terms of Minnesota jobs (2019). Includes stories: Barnesville and Cottage Grove craft the local Business Retention and Expansion playbook. Minnesota Economic Trends (a DEED publication).

• New book on BRE - https://www.routledge.com/Business-Retention-and-Expansion-BRE-A-Practical-Approach-to-Economic/Darger-Barefield-Hales/p/book/9780367173616 edited by Darger, Barefield and Hales. See "collection of special research on BRE" below. 

• Professional Practice of BRE - Research Findings from Interviews with Economic Development Officials (EDOs) in Minnesota (2018)

• A collection of special research on BRE (2017) - Special Issue 48:2 of Community Development - Journal of the Community Development Society

  • Introductory article - Business Retention & Expansion Today

  • Lessons Learned from a Generation of Community-Driven Business Retention & Expansion Programming (UMN's BRE story)

  • Grow Minnesota!®: Using grassroots data to support business growth and retention in the state of Minnesota

  • Obtaining manufacturers’ perspectives in making regional transportation decisions

  • The silver tsunami and rural small business retention: What can communities do?

• Using Focus Groups for BRE (2014). See: https://ageconsearch.umn.edu/record/183432?ln=en 

• Evaluating BRE with Ripple Effect Mapping (2014). Journal of Extension.

• Community Organizing Applied to the BRE Process (from an unpublished evaluation of Extension's BR&E Strategies program by Linda Bosma, Ph.D.)

Other Extension Community Economics Programs  

• https://extension.umn.edu/node/1536 UMN Extension's community economics homepage 

Workforce Research

• UMN Workforce Research Symposium - May 2018, videos of speaker presentations