The Madison Region offers a wealth of resources at the state, region, county and city level to help entrepreneurs grow and expand their business.
The Wisconsin Department of Commerce has Area Development Managers to assist business owners with their specific needs, whether financial, location, industry specific, employee or technology development. The Department also offers Trade Show grants, helping many entrepreneurs bring their product to broader, more far-reaching markets--even internationally.
The
Wisconsin Entrepreneurs Network, or WEN, has a wealth of information to further assist business owners and entrepreneurs with needs including marketing, product development, intellectual property, competitive research. This statewide resource represents the creative and innovative brand of the Madison Region with its
searchable resource connection interface, entrepreneurial connections and e-newsletter and events calendar.
To find a building, site, location or to research communities for business expansion, see our Data Center, below. Here you can find a wealth of city, county and regional statistics, a full listing of available buildings and site, and demographic and labor force information.
Additional research on the Madison Region and State of Wisconsin can be found at
Forward Wisconsin, the economic devlopment and marketing arm for the State of Wisconsin.
Alongside the efforts of Thrive for the eight-county Madison Region is Governor Doyle's Growing Regional Opportunities (GROW) grant programs, established as part of the GROW Wisconsin plan to encourage regional partnerships and coordinate economic, workforce and education data. This effort guides an "apples to apples" comparison of regions inside the state and of the GROW Regions to similar areas outside the state to more easily identify and measure the progress of economic development initiatives.
The Southwest Wisconsin GROW region incorporates the eight-county Madison Region. Benchmarking for the GROW Region can be found through the
Department of Workforce Development.
For further information specific to the eight-county Madison Region, see the
Business Climate section of our site.