The conference took place at the premises of the Innovation and Development Agency of Garrotxa (DinamiG) in front of some fifteen people from the technical team of the agency, as well as ADRINOC, and the municipality of Olot. The starting point was the need to analyze the motivations to intervene in the economy from the local level (the “why?”) as well as the objectives that are pursued with this intervention (the “what for?”), to conclude that the answers to both questions are currently highly conditioned by the origin of the available resources for local economic development policies. Finally, the tools necessary to break this inertia have been exposed: know how the local economy works, as a fundamental basis for articulating effective policies, and the keys to building an economic strategy that addresses the three dimensions of local economic development (network, put in value and attract).