Michigan Governor Rick Snyder is making "economic gardening" a focal point of his economic development strategy, and he praised the Small Business Association of Michigan (SBAM) for its leadership on the issue in his State of the State address. SBAM commissioned PPA to prepare the white paper, "Blueprint for Propelling a New Economic Direction for Michigan," that the Association used to launch the initiative.
Economic gardening focuses on helping Michigan businesses grow. It represents a shift from “economic hunting,” which involves seeking to bring out-of-state companies to the state through tax credits and other incentives.
In his State of the State Address, Governor Snyder said, “We need to put more emphasis on economic gardening as opposed to hunting. For those unfamiliar with economic gardening, it means we will focus first, and foremost, on building businesses that are already here in the state.
“For startups and young businesses, we’ll work with our regional partners on continuing to develop and improve our entrepreneurial networking, business acceleration services, incubators, pre-seed funds, and entrepreneurial education will be a priority.
“We will create a statewide network of talent coordinators who are focused on connecting entrepreneurs, innovators, management talent, and job seekers with established companies. Using the open source economic development model, we will follow the success of Ann Arbor SPARK’s talent enhancement program.
“We will identify economic gardening activities as a result of helping companies post their positions on a talent portal. And we will scale this to the entire state and make the job posting available to every company that expands, locates, or starts a business in our state. And I want to offer special thanks to the Small Business Association of Michigan for its aggressive leadership in this area."
Learn more about PPA's work on Economic Gardening.