The most valuable part of an industrial development may not be the land. It may be the economic composition built upon it.
Economic Curation is Beyond Usual’s wider philosophy for understanding an economic system and deliberately shaping the conditions, connections and capabilities that can help it create and retain more value. This working paper applies that thinking to anchor-led industrial development.
Beyond passive allocation
Industrial developments are commonly treated as property projects: prepare the land, release it to market and allow prevailing demand to determine the occupants. That can produce successful sales and conventional development returns, while leaving much of the precinct’s long-term economic value to chance.
Economic Curation introduces strategic intent. It asks whether each significant occupant strengthens the performance and attractiveness of the wider precinct—not simply whether a site can be sold or leased.
An anchor creates economic gravity
An effective anchor is not necessarily the largest organisation in the precinct. It is the one whose presence changes the proposition for others. It may create a meaningful supply chain, attract specialist workers, require advanced infrastructure, establish research relationships, confer market credibility or generate demand for supporting services.
Once an anchor is secured, business attraction becomes more precise. Suppliers, customers, technical needs, workforce requirements and capability gaps can be mapped, allowing the developer and its partners to target organisations that strengthen the emerging ecosystem.
Co-location is not enough
A cluster is not valuable merely because related organisations occupy neighbouring sites. The value comes from functional complementarity: connections across a value chain and shared capabilities that allow firms to reinforce one another.
The intended progression is anchor organisation → supporting suppliers and services → deeper specialist capability → complementary investment → compounding precinct and regional value. This progression needs active stewardship. It does not happen automatically.
Value for developer, businesses and region
For a developer, curation can create differentiation, stronger demand, increased value across later stages, greater resilience, ongoing participation in the ecosystem and a stronger reputation. For businesses, it can improve access to suppliers, skills, research, infrastructure, customers and specialist services. For the region, it can deepen productive capability, workforce skills, supply chains, innovation and investor confidence.
An illustration, not a prescription
Aerospace, advanced aviation and drone technology provide one useful example. An airport precinct has authentic aviation assets and can support capabilities in engineering, propulsion, sensors, software, data, testing and certification—many of which can also serve agriculture, infrastructure, environmental monitoring, emergency response, health and other markets.
The point is not to prescribe aerospace everywhere. It is to identify the intersection of real market opportunity and authentic place-based advantage, then retain enough flexibility for adjacent opportunities to emerge.
The proposition
Treat a precinct as an economic ecosystem rather than a collection of property transactions. Choose anchors for the platform they create. Build the relationships and capabilities that make firms more valuable together. Let value compound across successive stages—and make sure both the developer and the region can participate in what is created.