The best starting point is to understand the nature and significance of economic development.  Derived from the MIT Development Report Card Model and Sustainable Economic Development program, at its basic core, economic development is the process of creating wealth; how a society increases levels of material and social well-being over a long period of time.   In a developing economy, such as semi-rural areas in the U.S., average incomes rise, technical and manufacturing innovation occurs, and the rate of economic growth rises in the aggregate.

Economic development is falsely equated solely with economic growth.  The terms 'development' and 'growth' refer to different aspects of sustaibable economic prosperity.  In a complex paradox, development is the result of growth while at the same time a prerequisite for growth.   "Development" is an essential 'qualitative' change, entailing changes in the economic structure, including institutional innovation, corporate behavior, and the application of cutting edge technology. In contrast, "growth" is a 'quantitative' change in economies of scale, which include volumes of output, degree of investment, number of jobs, level of consumption, increases in incremental average income, and other factors.

Thus, prior to growth, development must occur because growth cannot continue in a sustained timeline without the prgressive innovations and structural changes that are implicit in development, so development is a prerequisite to growth. But, growth will drive new shifts in economic condition, causing firms to be recruited or created, leading to new products and numerous incremental innovations orvaried size and scope. In combination, these paradoxical development-growth-development advances allow an economy to increase productivity through the infusion of technology and innovations that enable production of more outputs with fewer inputs over the duration of a period of years.  This paradox is the essence of economic development and is the single, most direct route to sustainable prosperity.