In this featured conversation, Dell Gines of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City interviews Chris Gibbons, founder of Economic Gardening®, on how communities can grow jobs by growing their own companies. Gibbons explains how Littleton, Colorado shifted from chasing large employers to supporting local Stage Two firms (10–100 employees) with sophisticated market research, infrastructure, and ecosystem support—an approach that helped pioneer entrepreneurship-led economic development.
Gibbons and Gines discuss why innovation-exporting companies are the real engines of local wealth and how the National Center for Economic Gardening equips communities to work with these growth firms in a disciplined, trademarked way. This interview offers NCEG partners a concise primer on the core concepts, origins, and practice of Economic Gardening
