Three mayors from different regions, facing challenges unique to each, share one focus on the future: cities need to grow their entrepreneurs. In a recent Governing column, the mayors of Albuquerque, Minneapolis and Little Rock reflected on how the Amazon HQ2 site competition refocused them on their own strengths. Rather than marshal resources for the next relocation scrum, these mayors,learning from their Amazon exercise,suggest that if city leadership invested as much energy and resources in growing local entrepreneurs and businesses as they did in their relocation efforts, their communities would be better served.

They couldn’t have delivered a more direct charge to other mayors. “We need a new model for economic development that supports, as the primary objective, using local resources to grow businesses from within a community, not one that first looks to the outside to import them.” On average, those communities which invest in their intrinsic growth expand the economic pie more than those which don’t. While emerging businesses are the primary source of job growth in our communities, these mayors note that “current economic development policies rarely treat them that way.” This misdirected focus on relocation opportunities makes no sense when a city has intrinsic talent to grow.

Resources exist to help cultivate local talent, from the work of the National League of Cities to the research of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation. Other cities have successfully refocused economic development efforts on their own talent. Even with the challenges facing Baltimore and with its limited resources, these three mayors still urge us to see the criticality of nurturing entrepreneurs as a way to profoundly reimagine and ultimately reshape our communities. Along with supporting a new Police Commissioner, the need to reinvest in our schools, and to fix potholes, sewers and other infrastructure, Baltimore’s pool of talent is varied and immense and it needs a mayor with a playbook that includes them too.

With more than 30 years’ experience in law and business, Newt Fowler, a partner in Womble Bond Dickinson’s business practice, advises many investors, entrepreneurs and technology companies, guiding them through all aspects of business planning, financing transactions, technology commercialization and M&A. He’s the pastboard chair of TEDCO. Newt can be reached at newt.fowler@wbd-us.com.