We are providing some background information to staff members at the Edward Lowe Foundation later this week.

The Lowe Foundation supports one of the important new models of economic development: economic gardening.

Developed by Chris Gibbons in Littleton, CO, economic gardening focuses on providing an information infrastructure for innovative businesses to leverage in their growth. You can learn more about economic gardening from the Littleton, CO web site.

I-Open's approach to open source economic development falls in line with the practices of economic gardening. Both are based on accelerating entrepreneurship and innovation. And both are based on strengthening civic networks.

During our presentation, we will focus on how we have applied our model open source economic development to accelerate regional change and create new civic practices that support innovation.