Congrats to six Metro Detroit communities for earning the title of the region’s most entrepreneurial cities..
Auburn Hills, Dundee, Plymouth Township, Southfield, Tecumseh and Troy.
That news comes from the University of Michigan-Dearborn’s Center for Innovation Research…
The 2008 “eCities” study (or “the Entrepreneurial Cities Index”) found that many southeast Michigan municipalities “are hard at work attracting, cultivating, building and holding entrepreneurial firms.”
The study, conducted by iLabs, the Center for Innovation Research in the UM–Dearborn School of Management, focuses on entrepreneurship because of its importance to expansion and diversification of Michigan’s regional economies and the impact small businesses have on job creation.
This second annual UM-Dearborn study found that successful communities work with entrepreneurial businesses to determine their needs and carry out relationship marketing akin to private sector firms.
“Economic development agencies, local chambers of commerce, and state agencies all are instrumental in helping bring firms to a community,” said Timothy Davis, director of iLabs. “Successful local governments also have professional and empowered staffs who champion new businesses, leading them to solutions and acting as a conduit for networking.”
For this year’s report, the UM-Dearborn researchers developed an online interface to allow communities to enter public data and 36 communities in southeastern Michigan took part in the study, up from 14 in 2007.
The UM-Dearborn study used the data supplied by the communities as well as other public records to assemble a six-factor, 31-item index to measure entrepreneurial activity, looking at such factors as “clustering,” incentives, growth, policies, community and education.
One Comment
Entrepreneurail Cities Index? What is the value of this? Dundee and Plymouth township are cities? Or are they places where the talented economic development professionals had time to fill out the survey? The notion that clustering, growth policies, and community are measured by a survey ought to sound absurd. If that doesn’t than maybe the claim that these places have people paid for from a tax base that are working on relationship marketing akin to that practiced by private firms ought to.