If a job is about more than the title or even the paybut also a chance to find a deeper meaning and sense of purposethe honorees in the inaugural class of most innovative companies in economic development are chasing a similar ideal, just on a larger scale. These accelerators, city agencies, and public-private partnerships are working to cultivate innovation economies in their regionsand in a sector that often (and understandably) focuses on the headline numbersjobs created, dollars investedthese honorees did more than just stoke the economic engine; they afforded spaces for new narratives and creative communities.Some are working on reinvention: Huntsville, the Alabama town famous for its history with NASAs rocketry program, has remarketed itself as a music, arts, and cultural destination; while Hilliard, an Ohio city of less than 40,000 in the Columbus area, continues to build out infrastructure to incubate innovative startups. Others found ways to expand the opportunities within existing hometown industries: NCBiotech built pathways to bring more local residents into the Research Triangles booming life sciences sector. Michigan Central, an old train station converted into a 30-acre innovation campus in Detroit, opened its doors last July. STACKTs small-business incubation concept, comprised of repurposed shipping containers, is breathing new life into Torontos street life. And PIDC, a public-private investment group in Philadelphia, is redeveloping the centuries-old U.S. Naval Shipyard with a $1 billion diversity pledge. Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park, seeks to build out the future of cutting-edge quantum computing on the site of a former steel plant site in Chicago.Of course, crafting entirely new narrative works, too. Timbuktoo Initiative, launched last year by the UN Development Program, is working to improve venture capital pipelines to entrepreneurs across the continent. Sustainability has also been a driver for development: Bristol City Leap, in the UK, is a citywide decarbonization program that will create hundreds of local green jobs; while Lamu Blue Carbon Project, a blue carbon credit program, will preserve mangrove habitats in coastal Kenya. 1. City of HuntsvilleFor making music, and supporting musicians, a centerpiece of a citys business growthFor many years, Alabamas Rocket City, so called due to its long history with NASAs rocketry program, has been more like Rock City. Huntsville has made music a key focus of economic growth, starting with a 2018 city musical audit championed by Mayor Tommy Battle, that quickly grew into a larger effort to build a creative ecosystem.While this past years marquee event, the inaugural South Star Music Festival, was partially canceled due to bad weather, the changes wrought by this effort are visibleand vocal. 2024 marked the conclusion of the citys five-year plan, passed in 2019, to focus on music-related development, including hiring a music board and full-time music officer and investing in music programs and facilities in school and libraries. Across town, a constellation of new, smaller venues, such the-middle-school-turned-event-center Campus No. 805 and the multistage retail space Stovehousenot to mention the Music Ambassador Program, which started in 2023 as a way to promote local musicians touring efforts and so far has provided support to more than 40 tourshave continued to attract more creative talent. The citys locally owned Orion Amphitheater, the nexus of the $2.2 billion Midcity development, has become a strong tourist draw.Huntsville has always seen this investment as not just a quality-of-life improvement, but as an economically advantageous way to attract a young workforce. As evidence for its appeal, the city points to its growing population, which has added 10,000 people a year since 2020; a 2.8% unemployment rate; and 2,500 new jobs added in the past year. 2. Michigan CentralFor turning a Midwest architectural icon into a startup hub for 21st century mobilityThe redevelopment of a formerly vibrant train station into a $1 billion innovation campus has become the latest symbol of Detroits efforts to resurge. A walkable, 30-acre district in the Corktown neighborhood, Michigan Central repurposed decades-old buildings from the citys heyday to contribute to its current renaissance. Ford Motor Co. purchased and rehabbed an abandoned railway station and 18-story tower, restoring a decrepit shell to its original Art Deco sheen, while an unused book depository reopened as a startup hub, Newlab, which attracted more than 100 startups and over $700 million in funding in just over a year after its 2023 opening. The tech from one startup, Electreon, is embedded in the nations first EV charging road. But Michigan Central doesnt just offer an architecturally striking space to incubate ideas; it provides a test bed. The mix of startups, mobility innovations, and a multinational corporation in the form of Ford fosters a varied ecosystem of talent, while the campus mobility lab and Advanced Aerial Innovation Region designation allow startups to test and iterate on their ideas in real world situations. Fast-track permitting from the city is accelerating the path to innovation, with the goal of turning the once-busy station into a hub of a different sort.3. Bristol City LeapFor turning a blueprint for a more sustainable city into an economic engineBristol, in southwest England, became the first city in the U.K. to adopt a net zero goal back in 2019. But the challenging road required to hit that target inspired the city government to see out new kinds of partnerships to meet that bold pledge. In 2023, city council announced Bristol City Leap, a substantial initiative to decarbonize local businesses and develop 1,000-plus jobs by leveraging $1 billion in investments to make the city a testing ground for community change. City leaders engaged the decarbonization company Ameresco and Vattenfall Heat UK, which supplies district heating systems, to help transform Bristols energy system. Over the next five years, investments in the seaside city will create an EV charging network, add heat pumps and solar panels to schools, refurbish city-owned housing, and deploy renewables in tandem with partners like the Bristol Energy Cooperative. Last year, the initiative picked up momentum, distributing $350 million in grants and building to two sections of Bristols heat network, a district heating system that will pipe hot water warmed by heat pumps around the city. The initiative will also benefit local industry by slashing energy costs. Bristol has a reputation for climate action and community support for renewables; this city-scale move shows that it is raising its own bar.4. STACKTFor giving small Canadian businesses the community, and boost, they need to succeedTorontos STACKT market, an outdoor bazaar built from repurposed shipping containers, has fostered a unique commercial community since 2019. In 2024, the founders decided to expand on that vision with a new platform and digital strategy designed to support budding entrepreneurs. The STACKTx network seeks to help small stores and thrive, with the goal of supporting the growth of 11,000 small businesses across Canada in the first year.STACKTxs strategy starts with a free digital platform that includes digital resources, mentorship, information about grants and community partnerships, and discounts on marketing and product development services. 5,000 businesses have joined so far. In November, the organization hosted a social conference, featuring opening remarks from the countrys minister of small business, Rechie Valdez. STACKTx will help retail concepts take a low-cost test run with monthly storefront grants, which will give entrepreneurs a month-long retail lease in Toronto, and hopes eventually to expand to Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver. These grants aim to give storefront space to new businesses without the burden of long-term rent agreements and high overhead.5. Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics ParkFor turning a 20th-century steel plant into a center for 21st-century quantum computingOnce compared to the ruins of the Colosseum and Roman aqueducts, the former U.S. Steel plant South Works, in South Side, Chicago, presents a gargantuan urban void. Home to factory complexes that once employed 20,000 workers, the site has been the focus of several redevelopment crusades. A new plan, to build a quantum computing center there that will tap into the sites generous electrical hookups, hopes to once again make this campus a central economic driver. After a successful push by Chicago Quantum Exchange, a group founded to advance the industrys growth, Illinois economic development officials agreed to provide $500 million in investments and grants to build the 128-acre Illinois Quantum and Microelectronics Park. Flagship firm PsiQuantum will install numerous quantum computing systems onsite, including a 300,000-square-foot Quantum Computer Operations Center, and the announcement has already attracted additional high-tech firms like Eero-Q as well as DARPA, the Defense Departments investment arm for defense technologies, which will build a national testing ground for quantum technologies.6. Lamu Blue Carbon ProjectFor turning coastal carbon credits into a scheme for local revitalizationPreserving trees and forests through carbon credits has been an effort rife with mixed results. But the new Go Blue initiative, which seeks to preserve vital mangrove forests and revitalize the rural economy of Kenyas northernmost coastal county, Lamu, offers a new vision of positive environmental and economic development. The effort, launched in 2023, aims to preserve nearly 10,000 acres of mangroves, considered to be one of the most effective carbon sinks on the planet, and funnel sales of the resulting credits back to villagers in the countrys northern coastal communities. The effort represents an expansion of similar programs in the country, like Vanga Blue Forest. The successful Mikoko Pamoja Project, the worlds first-ever blue carbon effort to fund the preservation of marine carbon sinks, generated $130,000 annually to local villagers. With more than half of the planets mangrove forests at risk, programs that meld local, sustainable growth and conservation offer a new way to achieve green economic engines.7. PhiladelphiasFor prioritizing equity in Philadelphias real estate projectsWhen Philadelphias public-private investment corporation, PIDC, acquired the 1,200-acre Navy Yard property in 2000, the former military site offered myriad possibilities. PIDC determined that regardless of the direction development took, it needed to be equitable. As part of the vast transformation of the site to support the regions burgeoning life sciences industry, the organization approved an ambitious joint venture with Ensemble Investments and Mosaic Development Partners on a project with a $1 billion diversity pledge, including using 20% of its equity investments on minority- and women-owned enterprises and funding extensive local hiringand workforce development initiatives. PIDC leadership at the time called it one of the most intentional and inclusive economic opportunity initiatives in the history of this city. Local architecture and design firms have greatly benefited from this approach; minority-owned businesses designed and constructed the 2500 League Island Blvd life sciences development, a rarity in the real estate world.8. NCBiotechFor making sure the benefits of the biotech boom ripple across more of the workforceNorth Carolinas booming biotech sector, which now employs 75,000 people and has $88 billion in annual economic impact, has been one of the nations biggest economic development success stories, turning the state into a science powerhouse. But in recent years, life sciences expansion has struggled to employ more North Carolinians. Local companies, desperate to hire trained staff, are poaching from each other, or bringing in new hires from out-of-state.To help bolster the workforce with more local talent, NCBiotech launched the Accelerate NC Life Sciences Manufacturing coalition, with funding from the U.S. Commerce Departments Build Back Better Regional Challenge, launched a multi-pronged campaign in September 2022 to break down local barriers to employment. Between starting new programs withuniversities statewide, investing in infrastructure to bring labs and manufacturing sites to underserved communities, and kickstarting ambassador, apprenticeship, and awareness-raising campaigns, the Research Triangle has helped hundreds enter the industry. Unique biomanufacturing courses at historically Black universities across the state offer quicker, accredited means of providing training to diverse talent pools. More importantly, the campaign is creating a blueprint of how to build up a high-tech industry while shrinking, rather than expanding, issues of inequity. 9. Timbuktoo InitiativeFor accelerating a startup boom across AfricaIt can often seem like the bulk of venture capital flows to the companies and founders who need it the least. To capitalize on Africas nascent tech industry, the UN Development Program launched Timbuktoo last year, an effort to raise $1 billion in the next decade to fund startup hubs and support 10,000 new companies. The continent has experienced rapid growth in startup venture funding, which has grown six times faster than the global average since 2022, as well as an explosion in tech savviness among younger populations. But the funding hasnt kept pace with the needs of new firms and ideas, nor expanded beyond the four countries leading Africas startup scene, Kenya, Egypt, South Africa and Nigeria. To remedy that, this initiative blends commercial and government capital, leveraging support from the UN as well as universities, corporations, investors, and development partners. Timbuktoo has so far launched a fintech hub in Lagos, Nigeria, that brings together 42 companies from 31 countries, and is planning similar spaces across the continent, including a healthcare hub in Rwanda and a green-tech hub in Kenya.10. City of HilliardFor proving that a small Columbus, Ohio, suburb can build a high-tech innovation ecosystemA small Ohio suburb of less than 40,000 people doesnt sound like the most likely site for a startup hub. But Hilliard City Lab, a savvy buildout of the infrastructure and expertise that innovative firms need to thrive, has become a key incubator in the region.The city isnt swarming with VCs, so the program made targeted investments and partnerships count, including the construction of a 60-mile-long fiber optic network, the building of Ohio Manufacturing Innovation Center, and partnerships with local firms like Converge Technologies to provide space and expertise. The city also set up an AI sandbox, a testing site that lets firms evaluate artificial intelligence services without the need to spend hefty sums on cloud servers.Hilliard gives innovators another important form of support: cash. The city has awarded nearly $1 million in grants to 32 projects in the last four years to help seed small startups, half of which set up shop in 2024. This new test bed has already created results and new innovations, such as a first responder drone for 911 calls, a sewer overflow detector, an algae boat to clean ponds and lakes, and a virtual scoreboard for watching local sporting events. Explore the full 2025 list of Fast Companys Most Innovative Companies, 609 organizations that are reshaping industries and culture. Weve selected the companies making the biggest impact across 58 categories, including advertising, applied AI, biotech, retail, sustainability, and more.
