Published in Crain’s Grand Rapids Business July 28, 2025
By Jeff Donofrio and Kevin M. Guskiewicz
Innovation is the lifeblood of a modern economy, and Michigan has been its cradle for generations. Names like McCoy and Bissell in mechanics, Olds and Ford in autos, Kellogg and Gerber in food and Upjohn and Stryker in medicine reflect the Michigan-based ingenuity that revolutionized transportation, improved quality of life and transformed health care — while building vibrant industries and creating good jobs.
These aren’t just stories from the past — they’re proof of what’s possible. With the right strategies, home-grown innovation can drive even greater prosperity today. Top-performing regions cultivate strong innovation ecosystems — fueling research and development, activating talent, providing capital and supporting startup and scale-up activities that help companies take root and flourish.
Business Leaders For Michigan’s Innovation Economy Scorecard identifies our state’s major assets and opportunities to close gaps or leverage innovation to accelerate economic growth. The scorecard also is a helpful tool as we work with other leaders to underscore the importance of university-based research and education in maintaining state and national competitiveness.
Michigan’s foundation to join top-tier growth states is already impressive. The economic ecosystem we’ve grown here includes great strengths in engineering, design, advanced manufacturing, mobility and medicine, with a growing number of regional innovation hubs and investments. Augmenting $25 billion in annual corporate investments, Michigan’s No. 9-ranked R&D ecosystem is propelled by several research-intensive universities attracting top scholars and scientists from around the world. Seeking discoveries ranging from the practical to the profound, these researchers simultaneously educate and train our next generation of knowledge leaders.
Michigan State ranks among the top 40 universities nationally in utility patents, with Spartan innovators having produced more than 3,300 inventions to support nutrition, health, sustainability and other vital areas.
Here’s a small sample of recent innovations growing from MSU research and development: a chair that repositions people with mobility challenges to head off pressure sores; more sustainable food packaging; app-based voice-activated artificial intelligence accessible to people with speech disfluencies; wastewater treatment decision support tools for small-scale meat processors; more affordable farm irrigation monitoring systems; and a new method for analyzing proteins in plasma that could lead to faster blood test disease diagnoses.
The state of Michigan is known globally as a mobility leader, and MSU chemical engineers are raising electric vehicle battery performance, computer scientists and electrical engineers are making autonomous vehicles safer by improving sensor-based data fusion architectures, and materials scientists are helping improve efficiency by developing lightweight composites.
While advancing these innovations, Michigan State graduates approximately 13,000 well-prepared undergraduate and graduate students each year, a major injection of talent into the economy. Among recent bachelor’s degree recipients beginning their working careers, nearly two-thirds start in Michigan. We want to keep even more of them here — especially given Michigan currently ranks 32nd in college graduate residents and 33rd in innovation talent readiness and availability, according to the scorecard.
Attracting, activating and retaining the talent to keep Michigan competitive means focusing on opportunity and quality of life. That includes providing relevant education and training that better fit people’s means and needs. Michigan State’s partnership with Apple is a great example, offering a free, 10-month technical and entrepreneurship program at our joint Developer Academy in Detroit. Soon, it will be joined by a new Apple Manufacturing Academy focused on advanced technology and business skills.
One important element still missing, in our view, is a broad-based and durable vision across the state to activate and connect talent, capital, startups, government support and business — and the consistency of our leaders to stay united behind these commitments. When these elements are strong and linked, they can spur Michigan’s growth and increase its desirability as a place to live, work and thrive.
Michigan’s innovation economy, in short, must be more than the sum of its parts. Without that vision — that vital integration — even with our rich asset base, we in Michigan risk seeing the future designed and built elsewhere.
Jeff Donofrio is president and CEO of Business Leaders For Michigan, for which Michigan State University President Kevin M. Guskiewicz serves as a board member.