World Business Chicago’s cleverest product is not a program or a pitch deck. It is a front door - one entrance to a region that spent years behaving like eight separate sales teams.
Its service is free, its product is an 11-county region, and its best sales tool may be a soil report. Detroit Regional Partnership turned economic development into a concierge business.
A restrictive passport gave Armand Arton the problem. An internal ranking tool gave his firm the audience. Now Arton Capital sells judgment in a market where the rules, price and product can all change at a border.
Invest in Canada sells no software and writes no cheques. Its product is coordination: one public front door that turns a maze of governments, incentives and local partners into an expansion plan a global executive can actually use.