Bill Dow

Top corporate leaders are lending their support to a new state initiative designed to nurture and grow emerging Michigan businesses.

Faced with the rapidly evolving new economy, Michigan companies both large and small are tackling the challenge of attracting and retaining top talent.

In late January, more than 200 Tigers fans, including a company president, a physician, an auto dealer, a Catholic priest, and a sewage operator will play baseball with members of the 1984 World Champions and other Tigers greats at one of two weeklong fantasy camps in Lakeland, Fla.

With two gold-plated Emmy Awards for station excellence sitting on a credenza five feet from his desk at FSN Detroit’s Southfield headquarters, Greg Hammaren can’t help but keep his eyes on the prize.

In 2006, there were more than 50,000 arrests for drunken driving in Michigan, and 17,000 of those were in the tri-county area alone, according to the Michigan State Police’s recent drunken-driving audit.