Curt Stiles, Professor of Business Policy and Strategy, UNCW

The Cape Fear Economic Development Council is a valuable professional resource. Economic development is the effort to construct a structure of resources and business activities that is appropriate to the pattern of growth and prosperity desired by a local economy. Structure has a powerful impact on economic value creation, directing the manner in which it generates growth and prosperity. Construction of an appropriate economic structure is furthered by research and scholarship conducted in the local economy and made available to the business and social interests committed to development.
Economic development research can provide insights into where a local economy should best place its efforts and can increase the certainty that active participants need to commit their resources to business effort in the local economy.
I see the Council to be a medium to support research into local economic development. It can help provide access to the resources needed for research and can provide a format in which the research can be disseminated to interested users.

Information: Dr. Stiles is a professor of Business Policy and Strategy at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Prior to joining UNCW in 2003, he was a professor at Seton Hall University, California State University, and University of Southern California. He is a member of the New York Society of Security Analysts and the Chartered Financial Analysts Institute. He is the author of dozens of research papers that have appeared in such journals as Strategic Management Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Developmental Entrepreneurship, Journal of Private Equity, and Journal of Small Business and Entrepreneurship. He is the contributing editor of two books in entrepreneurship, Ethnic Entrepreneurship and Developmental Entrepreneurship. He is on the editorial board of the Academy of Management Journal and the Journal of Management History.