Ann Arbor SPARK may be lapping the competition because it's been up and running for five years this month and continues to pick up speed when it comes to helping local start-ups and small businesses.
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Ann Arbor SPARK is celebrating its fifth birthday this month and is looking forward to cementing the Ann Arbor area as Michigan's go-to entrepreneurial ecosystem.
The small business accelerator agency and its handful of incubators have established themselves as the heads of their class in Michigan, helping start-ups get going and small businesses ramp up their business plans. Expect to see more of that over the next five years. Ann Arbor SPARK Executive Director Mike Finney agreed to answer a few questions over email about how he sees this playing out.
Ann Arbor SPARK spent its first five years helping establish Washtenaw County as one of the Midwest's premier entrepreneurial ecosystems. What will be its focus over the next five years?
Over the past five years the Ann Arbor region has become a leading entrepreneurial location, but we still have much work to do before declaring victory. We will continue to focus on becoming a place where talent, technology, funding, entrepreneurial risk taking, success celebration and connectedness to universities and private companies are the norm. We also see a need for much more aggressive business expansion and attraction efforts. The use of social networking, talent enhancement and other marketing tactics will become key tools in our economic development toolkit. Finally, we need to learn from and share our learnings with other communities throughout Michigan and Southeast Michigan in particular.
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