Network-based solutions for economic interdependence

This idea addresses the following issues from the report: economic leakage, connecting business owners, on-island jobs/income, business resilience.

Supply-demand relationship in economies (especially in dense communities) form complex webs which recent science and tech (past 1-2 decades) can surface in a network-based form that clearly reveal economic interdependence in a community, and allows it to shape it to their goals. (See references throughout this solution, which is just one example)

As the "Industry hubs" idea also describes, economic participants on Bowen Island could better connect their supply-demand points within their existing capacity, and further, they could create additional supply or demand offerings if they were more aware of clear gaps that would complete economic flows which could stay more within Bowen and affect other nodes on Bowen.

The type of solution this entails is much more than another marketplace. In conventional marketplaces (digital or physical) economic transactions are a direct line from a supplier to a consumer, i.e. 2 nodes. On the other hand, these emerging network-based marketplaces of the future consider economic flows that affect many nodes in between the supplier and the consumer. Such algorithms can run without affecting the privacy of any intermediary nodes. All the new complexity can be completely hidden from those buying and selling, and exposed only to the admins and engineers of the local economy.

With such a solution, a local economy can start to sponsor its own economic growth with much less dependence on outside capital or monetary conditions, and to explicitly connect internal job creation with internal spending and investing power. It's a direct answer to economic leakage and business resilience.

While this multi-stakeholder network-flow approach is novel in economics, and has yet to be proven in an full-scale economic environment like the one on Bowen Island, it has been proven superior in specialized sub-economies (the latest inter-bank liquidity markets, resource matching networks, the most successful commercial cryptocurrency (XRP)). There are multiple groups innovating on scaling it to general economies. Myself and another founder of one of these (a non-profit) are Bowen residents. Ours may not be the right one for Bowen, but the CED plan's longer-term view could consider this class of solutions in general.