Here's a summary for a book chapter I will be writing on strategic doing:

Civic leaders in communities and regions across the United States are facing dramatic economic challenges, and they need new ways of meeting these challenges. Collaboration and speed have become key competitive assets. Collaboration matters because the assets we need to compete globally fall outside the boundaries of any one organization or political jurisdiction. Speed matters because markets are shifting quickly as companies adjust their strategies to new competitive realities.

Old approaches to strategic planning are not sufficiently responsive. Traditional strategic plans tend to be slow, expensive and difficult to execute. Yet, in a fast moving world making strategic decisions is more important now than ever. In an era of dwindling budgets, we need to be smart about how we invest public and private resources for economic development.

Strategic doing, a set of disciplines developed at the Purdue Center for Regional Development, guides civic leaders in new ways to think and act strategically. Unlike traditional approaches, strategic doing is fast, low cost, and focused on "learning by doing". The lessons of strategic doing evolved from open source software development. Specifically, people engaged in loosely joined networks can accomplish very complex projects by following some simple rules.