Policy makers and business leaders have a broad array of tools at their disposal to implement economic development strategies.  Economic development organizations are one of these tools.  They focus on how economic development gets done.  Economic development organizations use business retention, business attraction and promotion of entrepreneurship as their prime tools to promote economic growth.  Economic development organizations are in the business of creating successful public-private-partnerships.   These organizations are private sector lead, public sector lead or a mixture of both.  Private sector lead economic development models are growing in popularity.  Many major metro regions have created multi-county private sector lead groups, likely with public sector funding, charged to retain and attract jobs.  In some states, the private sector is taking over economic development.  The move to private sector economic development organizations in Ohio, Wisconsin, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Kansas, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Wyoming has not been without controversy.  The majority of regions and states rely on government officials to implement economic development policy.  These state and local government officials focus on business retention and expansion efforts to retain and attract new jobs to a region.  These same state and local government officials bear the responsibility of implementing the governmental approval process with elected legislative bodies to approve the company’s tax incentives award. Public sector lead economic development organizations at the state level are state executive agencies with a Director that reports directly to the Governor.  How regions and states approach economic development is the focus of my paper planned for submission and this paper is a chapter from my upcoming book to be published by Palgrave-MacMillan titled Economic Development from the State & Local Perspective.