For thirteen years straight, Area Development has ranked Georgia the nation's No. 1 state for business, a run no other state has matched. That did not happen by accident. It happened because governors and legislators made decisions over decades to keep Georgia competitive, because communities invested in infrastructure and economic developers built relationships around the world, because our universities and technical colleges turned out talent, and because the ports, the airport, the highways, and the rail network connected what Georgians make to customers who wanted it.  

Someone built the Georgia we love. Our job now is to build what comes next.

Governor Brian Kemp has carried that tradition forward with an aggressive commitment to economic development, fiscal discipline, workforce, and a business climate designed to reward investment. This commitment was exemplified in record-breaking fashion in fiscal year 2026 with roughly $35.2 billion in announced investment across 436 projects, with an estimated 25,300 private-sector jobs to follow.  

The most telling figure is that 79% of those projects came from companies already operating in Georgia, demonstrating that businesses familiar with the state continue to bet on it. Speaker Jon Burns and members of both parties in the General Assembly have been essential partners in holding that environment steady.

That legacy is worth continuing. But staying competitive will require us to widen our understanding of economic development.

For decades, states mostly competed to recruit companies, and recruitment still matters enormously; Georgia should keep traveling the world, telling our story and competing hard for investment. However, the competitive landscape is evolving, and the next model must deliver on three fronts rather than just one: recruit great companies, grow the businesses already here, and create the next generation of Georgia companies.

Think of Georgia's economy as an ecosystem. An idea starts somewhere: a university laboratory, a garage, a farm, the floor of a manufacturing plant. Then research develops it, capital funds it, a startup commercializes it, workers produce it, manufacturers scale it, our logistics network moves it, and Georgia companies sell it around the world. Every link in that chain matters, and a weak one costs us the whole sequence.  

We already hold extraordinary assets: research universities, technical colleges, logistics infrastructure, agriculture, advanced manufacturing, aerospace, fintech, life sciences, energy, and a fast-growing technology sector. The work ahead is connecting them better, moving research from the laboratory into the marketplace, putting entrepreneurs in front of capital, helping small and mid-sized businesses adopt artificial intelligence and robotics, encouraging research and development, and clearing regulatory barriers that slow responsible investment without protecting anyone.

It is worth saying plainly that innovation does not belong exclusively to technology companies. A farmer running precision agriculture is innovating, and so is a manufacturer deploying robotics, a logistics company using artificial intelligence, and a Main Street retailer selling to customers on another continent.

Government cannot manufacture entrepreneurship. What public policy can do is create an environment where entrepreneurship is encouraged rather than frustrated, and that distinction is the whole ballgame. It also calls for a particular kind of leadership, someone who has lived inside that ecosystem rather than studied it, and someone who understands that the conditions a company needs to grow are built patiently and lost quickly.

That is why the Georgia Chamber's Free Enterprise Fund has endorsed Rick Jackson for governor. 

Rick spent his career turning an idea into a Georgia company and then growing it into a significant employer, which is precisely the path this state needs more Georgians to be able to walk. He has been a member of this Chamber for years, and so has his son, so the business community is not meeting him for the first time in an election year. He has committed to continuing the economic security and prosperity agenda of the past eight years, with real attention to rural development and quality jobs, and he has been a consistent voice for free enterprise.

Thirteen years at No. 1 is a fragile kind of achievement. It rewards steadiness, and Rick Jackson is the candidate most likely to provide it.

Our children and grandchildren deserve the same opportunity we inherited, the freedom to imagine something, work for it, build it, and prosper from it. Georgia's next chapter starts now. We will not inherit it. We must build it together.