10 Tips for Implementing an Economic Gardening Project (Updated April 2008!)
Developing an economic gardening program in your community seems like the right way to go. What do you do next?
Economic Gardening: Next Generation Applications for a Balanced Portfolio Approach to Economic Growth
The U.S. Small Business Administration devoted an entire chapter of its 2006 report, The Small Business Economy: Report to the President, to the benefits of economic gardening.
Competitive Intelligence for Small Businesses: Littleton's Economic Gardening Program
Read Christine's article from the December 2004 issue of Competitive Intelligence magazine.
Economic Gardening
Economic Gardening is an entrepreneurial approach to economic development first pioneered in Littleton, Colorado in 1989. The focus is on creating a nurturing environment for growing local entrepreneurs rather than "hunting" or recruiting businesses from elsewhere. Littleton's approach is based on the three pillars of competitive information, physical and quality-of-life infrastructure, and connections among and between businesses and other community assets such as higher education, government programs, and business services providers.
Littleton's approach has resulted in a doubling of the number of jobs and tripling of sales tax revenues since 1989—a much higher rate than the region as a whole—while providing no incentives or tax breaks.
Economic gardening programs are also operating in several other locations, including Longmont, Loveland, and Highlands Ranch, Colorado; Wyoming (statewide initiative); Tuscola County and Keweenaw Peninsula, Michigan; Simsbury, Connecticut; Arcata, California; and several other locations in the U.S., Australia, and New Zealand.
An economic gardening project typically focuses its main initiatives on entrepreneurial second stage companies that provide the greatest impact on economic growth—the so-called high-growth companies or "gazelles." According to a recent report from the U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy, "High-impact firms are relatively old, rare and contribute to the majority of overall economic growth. On average, they are 25 years old, they represent between 2 and 3 percent of all firms, and they account for almost all of the private sector employment and revenue growth in the economy" (Acs, Zoltan J., William Parsons and Spencer Tracey, High-Impact Firms: Gazelles Revisited. U.S. Small Business Administration, 2008).