For economic developers, Inc. magazine’s “What Is Economic Gardening?” is a timely reminder that chasing relocations with incentives can easily become a race to the bottom, while entrepreneurship‑led Economic Gardening quietly delivers more jobs at a far lower cost per job.

Inc. magazine published a feature on Economic Gardening that began with how communities can grow jobs by supporting existing businesses instead of chasing relocations.

The April 2025 article revisits Littleton, Colorado’s response to major layoffs in the 1980s and explains how Economic Gardening equips second‑stage companies with advanced research tools—market and GIS mapping, competitive intelligence, SEO analysis, and trend data—to help them find new customers and scale.

Inc. notes that Economic Gardening creates new jobs at a much lower cost per job than traditional recruitment deals, making it an attractive option for entrepreneurship‑led economic development practitioners looking to maximize impact with limited resources.

For regions embracing entrepreneurship‑led economic development, three points from the article stand out.

First, Economic Gardening keeps the focus on local stage two companies that already generate a disproportionate share of new jobs and income in every state, rather than attempting to “buy” growth from outside.

Second, programs built on Economic Gardening principles routinely report cost‑per‑job figures in the neighborhood of 1,500–2,000 dollars, versus 20,000–250,000 dollars per job for many incentive‑driven recruitment packages.

Third, Littleton’s long‑term results—doubling its job base from roughly 15,000 to 30,000 and growing sales tax revenue from about 6 million to 20 million dollars without recruiting a single company or offering incentives—demonstrate that this approach is durable over decades, not just a short‑term pilot.

Inc.’s coverage underscores what practitioners have been seeing on the ground for years: entrepreneurship‑led Economic Gardening has moved into the mainstream as a core pillar of modern economic development strategy, not a niche experiment. As the national center that helped develop and scale this model, the National Center for Economic Gardening (NCEG) partners with regions to implement high‑fidelity Economic Gardening programs that deliver measurable job growth, stronger local firms, and a more resilient tax base.