LANSING – Two high-profile events this week provided an excellent opportunity to promote our diversification efforts and showcase some of the great things happening in Michigan.

On Tuesday, Governor Granholm and I met with venture-capital firms and life-science industry leaders at the 2010 BIO International Conference (BIO) in Chicago. BIO featured high-level industry leaders discussing public policy issues of critical importance to all segments of the biotechnology industry, including health and medicine, food and agriculture, industry and environment and emerging companies.

Our biotech industry is one of the fastest-growing in the nation thanks to some of the world?s best research institutions, a highly-skilled workforce and innovative economic development tools like the 21st Century Jobs Fund and the SmartZones program and we want to further strengthen our efforts by attracting more venture capital to foster increased entrepreneurship that will create new jobs in our communities. Our goal at this conference was to help investors and entrepreneurs understand why Michigan?s life sciences industry is growing exponentially and why it makes sense for them to do business here.

During BIO the governor and I made a pitch for the World Stem Cell Summit scheduled for October 4-6 at the Detroit Renaissance Center. It will bring together premier researchers, investors, industry leaders from more than 30 countries to Michigan to advance stem cell research and the promising technologies that will find cures. The 2010 World Stem Cell Summit will be the sixth annual conference organized by the Genetics Policy Institute. Previous summits have taken place in Houston, Palo Alto, Boston, Baltimore, and Madison, Wis.

Tourism industry decision-makers from across Michigan are on Mackinac Island today to learn, network and explore new opportunities during the Pure Michigan Governor’s Conference — Driving Tourism 2010. Each year the Michigan Lodging & Tourism Association, Travel Michigan and Michigan State University co-sponsor this state’s largest all-tourism event.

Governor Granholm was recognized by the industry for her work on behalf of the tourism industry specifically, her tourism awareness tours in 2003 and 2004; the signing of legislation for the post-Labor Day start of school; and leadership on increased funding for tourism promotion, which led to the creation of the Pure Michigan branding campaign, the state?s largest tourism promotion budget and first-ever national advertising in 2009.

Just as we are working to grow the clean-energy, advanced- manufacturing, life sciences, homeland security, and film sectors, so, too, are we working to grow the tourism sector of Michigan’s economy.

Pure Michigan raised the bar and marketed Michigan as a destination as never had been done before. We know from our return on investment research that Pure Michigan brings millions of new visitors to Michigan from all over the country. It means hundreds of millions of dollars spent at Michigan businesses. And it puts more money back in the state treasury in new, incremental taxes beyond what the campaign costs.

After a five-year trend of higher promotion budgets, unfortunately, we could not get legislative agreement this spring on a permanent funding source for Pure Michigan at the needed $30 million per year. We are continuing our work to make sure this gets done because while our national Pure Michigan advertising this year and last has been great for tourism, it also has been great for Michigan’s image around the country. Many Americans have an outdated or erroneous image of our state, much of it based on news coverage of the auto industry and its recent challenges. Pure Michigan puts a new face on Michigan?s image, one that I am sure is a surprise to millions of Americans who never have been here and know little about us. For example, a gentleman from South Carolina wrote, “I have never thought of Michigan as a tourism destination until seeing your ads.” A California woman said, “We?ve seen your new Michigan television ads. They are awesome ? makes me want to move there.”

Greg Main is President and CEO of the Michigan Economic Development Corp.

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