Synchronist PRIME

Synchronist PRIME was designed for use with primary sector companies. Primary sector companies are companies that import capital into the community from outside the region while providing employment. These international, national, and regional primary sector businesses are the basic economic building block of many communities in the U.S. and Canada.

Primary sector and secondary (retail and service businesses) sector businesses are fundamentally different. Secondary businesses essentially trade dollars already in the community or within a small regional trade area. These businesses generally represent a second level building block for a local economy.

This distinction is critically important when designing an executive interview. It is also the real reason there are two different versions of Synchronist -- PRIME and CRTS. A mixed interview design will give you decidedly mixed results leading to misrepresentation and poor decisions. PRIME is designed specifically for the issues faced by primary sector businesses. CRTS is designed specifically for the issues faced by secondary businesses.

By crafting a single survey instrument to interview all businesses executives -- a traditional economic development approach still recommended by some today -- economic developers ignore this important distinction. As a consequence, their findings underestimate risk and skew findings.