Economic Development = Value Creation + Exporting

It's easy to say that quality of life in a place can be improved by simply "adding value" to existing resources, like improving infrastructure, cleaning the environment, improving the schools, etc. However, all of these things cost money. And where does that money come from? Generally, the public sector - which represents taxes on income, sales, inventories, etc. So, while we can voluntarily clean up our own mess and donate our time to things we care about, we rely heavily on taxes to improve our place.

We also know that for our economic system to work, there must be "flow" of capital: people buy from and sell to each other, and in an allegedly break-even economy we would all be getting along just fine, doing the equivalent of each other's laundry. The problem is, just about every time there is a financial transaction, a tax erodes some of those dollars...and those dollars flow out of our regional economy to "somewhere else." Thus, a zero-sum game is actually less-than-zero-sum: our economy shrinks if we only serve ourselves. It follows, then, that the only we can bring new (much needed) dollars into our region is to export our services outside the region.

The Entrepreneurs EDGE focuses exclusively on companies that are exporting at least some of their goods or services outside the region, thereby bringing new dollars in. We do this by helping those companies manage the way they add value to their existing resources, mainly through innovation and entrepreneurial (risk-taking) behaviors. This requires that we encourage people to risk wealth rather than preserve wealth, and often this is what distinguishes the companies we work with from what we call lifestyle companies, which seem to exist solely to line the pockets of the owners.