Copyright 2025 SPARK

CEO Podcast: Ben Marchionna, MEDC

July 21, 2025 Podcasts

In this episode, Paul talks with Ben Marchionna, Michigan’s first Chief Innovation Ecosystem Officer at MEDC, about bridging the gap between startups and state programs, investing in early-stage companies through the Michigan Innovation Fund, and launching a go-to-market strategy for the state’s innovation economy. Ben draws on his experience in aerospace, clean energy, and advanced mobility to shape Michigan’s next chapter in tech-driven growth and talent attraction.

READ INTERVIEW

Paul Krutko: Welcome to Ann Arbor SPARK’s CEO Podcast…Conversations on Economic Opportunity. My name is Paul Krutko, and I’m the President and CEO of Ann Arbor SPARK.

My guest today is Ben Marchionna, Chief Innovation Ecosystem Officer at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, or MEDC. Ben previously led technology and business development at Electra.aero, advancing electric aviation through air mobility and decarbonization efforts. Before that, Ben was vice president of global operations at Ann Arbor’s own SkySpecs, a clean energy robotics startup, and got his start at the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, contributing to cutting-edge aircraft design for national security.

Ben is a University of Michigan alum who chairs the U-M Aerospace Industry Advisory Board, serves on the AIAA Board of Trustees, and was appointed by Governor Whitmer to the State’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Task Force.

Ben, welcome to the podcast.

Ben Marchionna: Thanks, Paul. Delighted to be here.

Paul: Yeah, so let’s just start off, you are Michigan’s first ever Chief Innovation ecosystem officer when appointed in May 2024. How did your previous roles at Lockheed Martin, SkysSpecs, and Electra.aero inform your approach to economic development on the innovation side of economic development at MEDC?

Ben: Awesome question. It’s hard to believe it’s been over a year at this point. It feels like I’ve been in the role both like two days and 200 years, depending on what door I open up. The last year or so serving in state government has been fascinating. I think the opportunity for Michigan to leverage all of the ingredients and power levers that we have in our backyard is unprecedented. Ann Arbor, I think in particular, is really well poised to ride this wave and as I think about the time that I spent building hard tech startups for the decade before jumping into state government, what that allows me to do now, sitting at the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, is have a builder’s mindset as I think about what programs and services we should be having. I think the ecosystem, at least from the State’s programs and funding opportunities, hasn’t changed all that much since it really kickstarted maybe 20 or so years ago. And the state, until very recently, hasn’t made very meaningful investments in that space either. So I think we’re really well poised to take advantage of the moment, if you will, but I think having had that firsthand entrepreneurial experience in building startups in Ann Arbor and outside of Michigan too, just provides a really unique perspective that I can maybe more easily understand and chat with founders as they’re trying to navigate the ecosystem as well.

Paul: Yeah, I think one of the things that’s interesting in working in any part of the economic development spectrum is the skill of translation. And what I mean by that is, and that’s what you’re bringing to the table, is a founder, an entrepreneur getting started is using a certain nomenclature and talking a certain way about what they’re doing. And government or government support programs can be talking, maybe saying the same thing, but using a different nomenclature, and bridging that is really, really important. 

So you’ve emphasized building connective tissue across startups, universities, investors, corporations, and governments. Can you give me some examples of where you think cross-sector collaboration has already been unlocked and is moving in the right direction?

Ben: Yeah, yeah, yeah, great question. The reason I talk about connective tissue so much, and I guess I even maybe alluded to with some of my opening comments around ‘we have the ingredients,’ it is really difficult to bridge silos. Unsurprisingly, silos exist in all kinds of organizations. You won’t be surprised to hear that there are silos in government or in academia or anything like this. And so when you look at a state like Michigan, we’re very geographically dispersed with all sorts of world-class assets, but in some cases, separated by 12-plus-hour drives in your car or different peninsulas and things like this. And so how you build a statewide innovation ecosystem that can leverage all of those different assets in a collaborative way? First, it’s not easy, but what it requires is regular interactions across, in and out of each of the regional ecosystems.

A place like Ann Arbor is such a bright shining star in the innovation ecosystem space that there’s a lot of things that I think Ann Arbor can, of course, do to help other regional ecosystems and vice versa. As startups that grow and scale within Ann Arbor can leverage other assets around the state, too that maybe we tend to think a little bit more narrowly about what’s in our backyard. But I think that’s one of the incredible opportunities ahead of us. If I’m thinking about places where the connective tissue works well, what I love about Ann Arbor — and I lived or live in Ann Arbor and moved back to Michigan from California specifically to come to Ann Arbor — I love how deeply connected the Ann Arbor ecosystem is. Within its own relatively small borders, about a hundred thousand people here, relatively small town, certainly compared to the big coastal innovation hubs. It’s a tight ecosystem. It doesn’t take very long to get connected to all of the right people. Now, part of the thinking that I’ve got within the state government role here is to figure out how do we help make access to those sort of micro ecosystems easier to do. I think that even when building startups here, it was easier to focus on the Ann Arbor ecosystem, but when you wanted to get connected elsewhere, those bridges weren’t as readily available. And so I think that’s my role on the state side to build the bridges across some of the regions in a more helpful way, too.

Paul: So recently we’ve had some additions to our “Make It in Michigan” toolkit, the new R&D tax credit and the Michigan Innovation Fund. How do these tools like the $60 million investment in the innovation fund move the needle in supporting early-stage innovation and scaling?

Ben: Yeah, of course, R&D tax credit is essential. One of the interesting things I think that does is that it incentivizes corporations to work with startups and the university ecosystem. I think that’s a really neat feature of that tax credit versus just a blind tax credit. In a way, this is very much in the theme of building connective tissue. What are the things that you can do that sort of force collaboration? Because generally speaking, once you get people in the same room, they tend to realize that there’s a lot more that they can do together than separate. If we pivot to the innovation fund, though, this is exciting because in June, we selected the awardees for the biggest tranche of the Michigan Innovation Fund, which is going to be focused on early-stage startup investing and the support services around those early stage startups. The innovation fund represents the biggest state investment in the ecosystem in about 20 years, especially in a really focused way. Big chunk of the $60 million that we’re deploying is going to evergreen-structured venture funds around the state, including Ann Arbor SPARK. And then the next portion of that is going to a variety of startup support services to basically help startups launch and grow and build the connective tissue, have convenings, first customer matchmaking programs, things like that. So I’m really, really excited to see what ideas we can sift through as we figure out how to tackle some of the challenges that we face.

Paul: And I think what’s interesting too is in the construct of the innovation fund, there was sort of an acknowledgement that several entities, us, Invest Detroit, Michigan Rise, we’re more about the structures in place. We don’t want to not have resources for the next great startup. So creating an evergreen structure was important. 

But the other side of it was the state’s evolved and for example, the Grand Rapids area is now beginning to emerge as a place where maybe we were 10 years ago, 15 years ago is where they are now. And so helping that region start, and it plays into the other elements of the Made in Michigan strategy, which is that place is important. And we have several places that are very attractive to talent. So how do we connect that aspect to those who want to be involved in the early-stage startup creating company space? So it’s kind of exciting that there are resources to help some of the other parts of the state that are now getting ready for that kind of thing.

Ben: And I think the fund is an amazing example of what you get when working together. I think to your point, SPARK was one of the very small number of early initiators of the grassroots coalition that came together to get this done, where it was like, Hey, working together, we can accomplish a lot more than if we’re just advocating for ourselves. And that led to around 60 different organizations around the state all saying, Hey, let’s focus on one set of priorities. And then over a two-year effort, as you well know how much work went into it, that birthed the innovation fund. This wasn’t a state-led thing that it was like an idea within the state alone. Yes, we were a partner at the table, but this was a very grassroots coalition that came together to advocate for this new funding infusion.

Paul: Yeah, I kind of want to give a shout out to Lieutenant Governor Gilchrist because back in that period, you said two years or so ago, we met with him and he sort of challenged us of, Hey, just don’t be asking us for something. Tell us and bring us a solution, how to do it. And so we worked and did that, and then it moved forward from there. 

Well, you’ve talked about launching a go-to market strategy for Michigan’s innovation economy. What are the key elements of that strategy and what are you thinking about and what are you working on over the next 12 to 18 months?

Ben: Yeah, great question. The first pillar of that strategy is having a strategy. This is something that from the state perspective, at least, there hasn’t been a consistent let alone a holistic strategy on how we should develop the innovation ecosystem. There have been ideas and there have been successful programs and pilots and things like that, but nothing that stitches everything together in a really cohesive way. And so over the next roughly six months, I expect that we’re going to be around the state quite a lot, engaging with the regional partners to understand, Hey, I’ve had a year in this role to kind of observe where we’re at, think through and brainstorm on different ideas that we’d like to go and pursue, and we’re ready to start putting the rubber to the road, if you will, on implementing a strategy. But first, we want regional buy-in, so we’re going to get all around the state and we’re going to chat with all of the ecosystem partners and be like, Hey, here’s where we’re thinking, but what are we missing? What should we be doing that maybe we haven’t thought of yet? And then how do we work together to actually get something done? 

And what I think that looks like some of the pillars, strong regional leadership and buy-in where the state is responsible for the connective tissue building, but this isn’t a top-down architecture where the state’s saying, Ann Arbor, you’re going to do this, Grand Rapids, you’re going to do that, to Sioux St. Marie, you’re going to do this. I think that has been one of the things that has probably held us back over the years, not having really lightweight touches at the state level, but having the strategy that connects it together. That one’s a little bit meta, but I think that’s an important one where the state needs to recognize where we should play and then where we should step back, apply funding and guidelines and opportunities like that, but otherwise let the regions drive ahead based on the assets that they have in their backyard.

I think that’s maybe the second core strategy here, which is, as you think about, in a way, this is product market fit to use entrepreneurial language, not trying to force every region to use the same tools to try and create one thing. It wouldn’t be a reasonable expectation for certain regions to only focus on high tech, high growth when they may not have really important assets in their backyard that enable that to happen. On the other hand, how do you make sure that those same regions can benefit from the tools that are available to perhaps support tech-enabled small businesses and entrepreneurship growth, and things like that. 

So one of the things that we’d like to embark on over the next 18 months in a really aggressive way is trying to evolve that infrastructure, like the statute architecture that allows us to apply the tools in the right way. SPARK is probably the best example of how smartzones were intended to work from day one. It’s working in Ann Arbor, we should double down on that. There’s other places around the state where it’s not working so great and that it’s kind of just remained stagnant over 20 years since it changed. How do we figure out how to keep what’s working well in Ann Arbor and then fix what’s not working well in other parts of the state? And this is where the regional engagement is going to be really important over the next six months.

Paul: Yeah, it’s interesting because some opportunities during my career to participate in some international organizations in this space, and one of the things that I was always struck by was the notion that one community would look at another community, and you’ve seen these charts. Silicon Valley, Silicon Valley Mountains. Take your pick. The thing you’re describing I think is what really works is that a region, a community does an asset map and says, this is an area that we’re good at and focuses on driving that forward from an innovation perspective. If you don’t have a bioscience community saying you’re going to become a bioscience cluster is a recipe for not succeeding. And so then on the other hand, as you described sort of our situation, many times I get asked, well, what clusters do you focus on? And what we always say is 570 last year invention disclosures for the University of Michigan across the broad array of technologies. We’re trying to nurture any of those to get them to scale. So that’s one of our strengths. But it also is potentially difficult to do because my team has to be well-versed in a variety of [industries], whether it’s therapeutics or software or hardware or whatever, and you look at a company like HistoSonics, that’s the other situation where it’s a technology that is a medical technology, but it’s something you’re building, right? 

And that was maybe the question I had, and then I have one more after that, is that one of the things that seems to be a strength that we can build on in the strategy development is that we have a long history of building things here. And we have R&D opportunities. And so how do you blend those two? How do you make this a place for others in the nation? I mean, we know we’re going here, but to say, Hey, you can build your product here, and that creates employment opportunities that are far broader than just in the R&D side of it.

Ben: Yeah, definitely. If I maybe use an analogy, a west coast analogy, you have Silicon Valley and then you have Silicon Beach is often what it’s called, down on the Los Angeles side of things. And within LA, El Segundo has emerged as self branded themselves as a hard tech focused area. I think Michigan has the benefits of both Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach, except all in one spot. And in California, those two ecosystems don’t really play that closely together, whereas in Michigan, I think in a very tight region, and then again, thinking about Ann Arbor, right? We have the equivalent of Silicon Valley and Silicon Beach within a 45-minute drive or so. And one of the biggest opportunities I think for Michigan is not only focusing on building stuff with traditional manufacturing, but it’s the infusion of technology into the manufacturing process. And we were talking about leveraging the assets in your backyard and not trying to create something out of thin air, which is generally a losing strategy. Instead, we say, Hey, we’ve got the ingredients that allow us to be best in class in both of these things. If you focus on driving the intersection of those two areas, that’s going to result in a lot more economic growth, sustainable businesses that can be around and be economically competitive over the long run. And I think that’s also going to drive a lot more talent to want to stick around and continue building in those areas, and then also drive talent into the state from elsewhere saying like, oh, wow, have you seen what Michigan is doing? I think that’s been one of the exciting things over the last, even just few months, as some of the work that has been championed over the last year has made its way out of the state through hearsay and social media and things like that. The number of inbound messages I’ve received from states who we usually think of as beating us — Ohio, even Texas and Florida, and parts of California — I’m getting any inbound messages saying, Hey, we’ve been watching what’s been going on in Michigan. Can we get your lessons learned? In a way, I want to be like, no, no, no. We’re focused on Michigan. We don’t want you to know what our secret sauce is. But it’s exciting to know that that word is also getting out that we’re doing something different now, and that is, I think, an opportunity that is ours to lose.

Paul: Yeah, I agree. Wholeheartedly. So closing out, last question. So looking ahead for you as you’re thinking about the future, what does a thriving Michigan economy look like five years from now in 2030? What impact do you think the efforts that you’re working on are going to have in terms of creation of jobs, attraction of talent, and statewide prosperity?

Ben: One of the really interesting things I think about innovation ecosystem development is the outcomes for some of these investments are measured on a long scale, in some cases, decades. And I think that if we get the next 18 months right as well, we can set Michigan up to be economically competitive across the state in a way that maybe we’ve struggled with in decades past, and being able to shift to a knowledge-based economy. This is something that Ann Arbor already is about, but as we look at the rest of the state, we have a lot of industries that are undergoing disruption right now that are very difficult to remain economically competitive given the scale of those industrial bases around the state. If we can figure out that fusion of assets that we have in our backyard, I think that’s going to be the most long-term impact that we’ll be able to have for the state. This drives population growth, this drives prosperity for all. If we can get this done, and I really believe that in the next 18 months, we’re building a foundation to allow that to happen. This is where progress is measured in quarter centuries, not financial quarters. Now, if you zoom in and look at 2030, what I think we’re going to see is a big infusion of startups that want to stick around because they’re seeing all of the interesting momentum and the fact that there’s capital that’s starting to flow, there’s the connective tissue that’s enabling them to be more successful in a way that maybe they haven’t been able to be in the past, and that just ends up being a talent magnet. 

I also think that there’s some big forces going on around the country that will lead places like Ann Arbor and Detroit to be magnets of talent, right? It is pretty expensive to have housing in some of the traditional large innovation ecosystems and post-COVID, where you can work from anywhere, being able to grow and scale a business or focus on really high-quality talent. I think communities like Ann Arbor really well suited to benefit from that shift, and that is also why the timing of the next 18 months is so essential. I said earlier, it’s ours to lose. We’ve got everything that we need to do to make this happen. And so I’m really excited to see what those outcomes will be over the long term.

Paul: Going back to something I said earlier, MEDC is an entity that has a multi-pronged approach, and what’s very refreshing about your appointment and what you’re working on is, I would totally agree with your earlier comment having been here the time I’ve been here, this is a renewed emphasis on this area that was significantly emphasized maybe 15 to 20 years ago. But the other point I wanted to make is, MEDC is also working on the place and the talent side of this equation. And one of the things that is really important, I think, in our offering is the quality of life that can be achieved here. We often talk to young talent at the University of Michigan to say, Hey, as opposed to maybe living in a trailer or in somebody’s garage in California, and my listeners and people that know my background know I was in Silicon Valley for 10 years, so I know of what I speak, you can actually have a future for a family, for children and things here, and a quality of life on commuting and other things that isn’t matched by the coast. 

So one of the things that is very important about what MEDC is trying to do is this effort, but it’s connected to those two other areas that try to keep the talent we have here, try to attract talent from elsewhere, but also really help communities build places that people want to live in. 

Ben: Right. Yep.

Paul: Yep. So Ben, thanks for taking time to talk to me today.

Ben: Of course, Paul. I appreciate it. Thanks a lot.

Paul: Great. And I want to thank our audience for listening and learning more from experts and leaders and organizations working hard to create the future of our economy here in Ann Arbor. These conversations are brought to you by Ann Arbor SPARK. For more information about Ann Arbor SPARK, you can find us on the web and annarborusa.org and also on Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn.

Ben Marchionna’s Bio

Ben Marchionna is a forward-thinking leader in technology, strategy, and operations, with a track record of building collaborative, entrepreneurial-minded teams to solve complex innovation challenges. As Michigan’s first-ever Chief Innovation Ecosystem Officer, he is responsible for driving the development, growth, and long-term sustainability of the state’s rapidly expanding innovation economy.

Before stepping into this role, Ben led technology and business development at Electra.aero, an aerospace and defense startup near Washington, D.C., where he helped advance the world’s first hybrid-electric aircraft for advanced air mobility applications. Earlier, he played a key role at Ann Arbor-based SkySpecs, where he built the global operations team and scaled autonomous robotics and AI-powered software into 26 countries.

Ben began his career at the legendary Lockheed Martin Skunk Works, contributing to next-generation aircraft programs and completing the company’s prestigious Engineering Leadership Development Program.

He holds a B.S.E. in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan and an M.S. in Product Development Engineering from the University of Southern California. Ben also serves as Chair of the University of Michigan’s Aerospace Industry Advisory Board, is a Board Trustee and Associate Fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and is a founding board member of the Los Angeles County Air Show.