Traditional economic development often emphasizes recruiting companies to move into the region (economic hunting), which usually requires incentives and highly competitive bidding wars.

Economic Gardening focuses on your existing, homegrown companies that got you here and are heavily invested in the community. EG provides them a more resilient base for long-term job growth and improved communities.

Second Stage companies are firms with $1–50 million in annual revenue and 10–99 employees (6-99 in rural areas) that have validated products, markets, and management capacity. They've demonstrated a capability that is still ahead for newer, start-up entreprenuers.

These companies have an outsized impact in most communities, where they represent only 10–15% of local companies, but account for 35–40% of new job creation, making them a high-yield, worthwhile target for economic development investment.
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Company selection criteria is:

• Have at least $1 million in revenue ($650,000 in rural areas).
• Employ at least 10 people (6 in rural areas).
• Have demonstrated growth over the previous four years.
• Serve and sell into markets beyond local retail or Main Street.
• Are financially sound.

The program delivers high-level research to support decisions in strategic areas, including:

• Intelligence on markets, industry trends, competitors, and new product developments.
• GIS-based mapping to visualize customers, competitors, and market densities.
• Analysis of a company’s search engine optimization, web marketing, and social media presence to surface specific improvement opportunities.
• Diagnosis of root issues in core strategy, market dynamics, innovation, temperament, and lead generation.

The program is designed to be lean and focused on strategic insight rather than ongoing operations. It does not implement recommendations, analyze financials, conduct primary research (surveys or focus groups), write business plans, or provide workforce or financing assistance.

Engagements are 40 billable hours and typically run four to six weeks. The NCEG is responsible for all aspects of the engagement including initial interviews, research, deliverables, specialists & tools, software, invoicing & tracking.

The economic development agency often funds or co-funds engagements. It is also responsible for finding and vetting company participants.

After the engagement, the National Strategic Research Team hands the company back to the local economic development agency for implementation support, ensuring that insights translate into action and job growth.

Economic Gardening began in Littleton, Colorado, after the community lost nearly 7,000 jobs due to defense cutbacks at the Martin Marietta plant in 1987.

City leaders chose to invest in local entrepreneurs, directing staff to “work with local businesses and create good jobs,” and over twenty years Littleton grew from 15,000 to 30,000 jobs without recruiting a single company.

Your results may vary, here's what's been reported around the US - 

• Florida added more than 4,000 jobs through Economic Gardening efforts.​

• Kansas averaged growth rates above 15% in participating firms.​

• Rochester documented 1,126 jobs and 30% revenue growth directly tied to Economic Gardening engagements.​

Economic Gardening uses corporate-level tools such as commercial databases, market and competitive intelligence, deep web research, geographic information systems (GIS), search engine optimization analysis, Artificial Intelligence search, social media listening, and “listening posts” tuned for the business..

Tools likes these are typically beyond the reach of most small and mid-sized growth firms, which is why state and regional sponsorship can have outsized impact.