Economic Development:
Maintaining Noosa’s natural beauty and great lifestyle is a big part of attracting new businesses and jobs. Creating the right conditions for businesses to flourish via planning scheme settings, resourcing, support and policies also give enterprises and their resident owners the best chance of success.
With over 7000 small businesses in Noosa Shire, the services they provide form part of the fabric of our community, as do the resident families they support.
I encourage all small business owners to join their local chamber or business association. They will represent your interests at council via the regular Business Roundtable meetings where business challenges and solutions are discussed.
The Economic development e-newsletter and support through economic development and business grants, the Sunshine Coast Business Awards program and linking businesses to the full range of state and federal business support programs are also part of the support network.
Programs like Business Boost also provides Noosa businesses with free access to specialist advisors across key business focus areas such as management and strategy, e-commerce, communications and marketing, sustainability audits and business mentoring.
The Peregian Digital Hub is providing space for the fostering of innovative start-ups, (many of which have outgrown it and moved on).
The Hub also provides training and support to help create the digital entrepreneurs of the future. I was fortunate to be in on ground level discussions about this concept with local digital entrepreneurs and it is immensely satisfying to see what has been achieved there thanks to very skilled managers and in-kind contribution of knowledge-sharing from successful entrepreneurs from across the region.
It remains a priority to continue working with landholders to create new spaces for new innovative high tech businesses.
