The Regional Growth Summit 2021
In partnership with the State Government of Victoria, the Regional Growth Summit is one of two free online flagship events brought to you by the Regional Growth Project in September 2021.
The Regional Growth Project was established in 2019 by 25eight Pty Ltd in partnership with the State Government and Local Government Areas across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland.
Our goal is to create a community of like-minded business leaders who come together around common challenges and ambitions to build better business outcomes. It has now grown into a national project that, alongside newly formed partnerships with .id, Redhanded and Storytowns, supports business leaders and their teams to adopt innovative practices (business management, digital, marketing & CX) to scale their business.
Across Regional there are a number of key challenges to address (Stats provided by .id):
- There are 74, 100 Regional Victorians on JobSeeker – 8% of those being 15-64 year-olds
- The GRP impact in Regional Victoria was 7.4% in June Qtr 2020 (recovery is underway)
- The skills gap – 20.8% had a bachelor or higher degree, well below the Australian average of 30.2%
- There are 138, 212 small businesses aiming to be healthy and sustainable
In the 2020 report, the Australian Small Business and Family Business Ombudsman highlighted the need for innovation and, in particular, the impact that it can have in terms of outperforming non-innovating counterparts on every measure including employment, profitability, and productivity (ABS, Innovation in Australian Business, Oct 2020). The success of the Regional Growth Project will be measured by growing the number of innovative, healthy, sustainable and scalable businesses throughout Regional Australia.
The flagship event for this project is the Regional Growth Summit held on Wednesday 1st September 2021, which delivers inspirational, targeted, and actionable content for individuals and business leaders with like-minded challenges to drive innovation and encourage action. The key themes for this year's Summit centred around digital transformation, how digital has enabled connections and how local communities have collaborated digitally to support each other and create impact. The Regional Growth Summit also provides a chance to reinvigorate local ecosystems and build collaborations that encourage resilient regional communities across Victoria.
A perfect example of how the vision of the Regional Growth Project is being executed with the regional communities is Buy From North East Vic. From the 400 businesses already onboarded, the impact has been broad, including digital upskilling, active ‘buy local’ community engagement and a free to set up shop/website/business directory with lots of support. Further details on the Buy From North East Vic story will be shared at the Summit.
“The City of Greater Bendigo has been a supporter of the Regional Growth Summit since it began in 2019. We have always found it to be a great way to bring the business community together to learn and implement positive and proactive strategies, ideally to see some benefit locally. We are particularly keen to be sharing regional perspectives and connecting everyone to these platforms that help them improve their outlook.” Glenn Pomeroy, Coordinator, Economic Development, City of Greater Bendigo
“As a capability building business with an ever-growing regional footprint ourselves, we want to make events valuable, engaging and interactive whilst supporting human connections. Previous participants have found huge value in meeting others in similar situations as well as learning realistic and practical actions they can implement immediately in their business. We want to show that great stuff is happening in regional Australia and to help share stories that will inspire others in their business,” said Phil Ore, Co-Founder and Co-CEO of 25eight
RGP’s second feature event was the Regional Growth Showcase - an online half-day event building awareness and celebrating the key digital and innovation projects happening across Victoria. The Showcase shared how the Regional Digital Fund is supporting local communities based across four key themes - Connectivity, Digital Hubs, Digital Health and Digital Inclusion. It was held from 10am - 1pm on Monday 6th September.
Both RGP events are FREE for all and were recorded - simply visit our learning platform to register and catch up on the recordings.
That’s all from us for now but if you enjoyed reading this don’t forget to like us on Facebook to stay up to date with all things #RGP.
You can also subscribe to our YouTube channel that we update regularly with event snapshots, small business tips and more.
Last but certainly not least, we have created a Facebook Community where we provide free ongoing support and opportunities for you to connect with like-minded regional business leaders, join the Regional Growth Champions!
