Incubators Offer Proven Tool for Tech Business Growth

State and local strategies to assist start-up business formation often focus on three elements to help nascent firms: securing much-needed funding or capital (either private or public), lowering the overall cost of doing business, or gaining the skill set or access to intellectual resources to succeed. These objectives of tech-based economic development are, perhaps, most important in a recession, particularly a downturn like the current experience which comes after such a sustained period of growth. 



Because most successful nonprofit technology business incubators address all three elements, it isn't too surprising to find the newspapers around the country carrying several stories on new incubators opening or existing incubators expanding their operations. The latter phenomenon, with examples in Maryland, Idaho, Missouri, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, attests to the economic development benefits that can be achieved through properly executed incubator strategies. 

• The opening of an 11,000-square-foot technology incubator in Lanham, Maryland is the fourth for Prince George County. The incubator, already with three tenants and room for nine more, is a partnership between Prince George's Economic Development Corp., the Maryland Small Business Development Center, and Microsoft. 
• The Maryland Technology Development Corp (TEDCO) has provided $1 million to help transform a former high school into a 45,000-square-foot technology incubator focusing on information technology companies. The new facility, to be managed by the Baltimore Development Corp., is the fourth Emerging Technology Center for the group and will benefit tenants by its proximity to John Hopkins University. 
• The University of Idaho is looking at creating its third incubator, the latest in a vacant water power building in Couer d'Alene. The project involves a partnership between the university, the city, the Idaho Department of Commerce, the Lake City Development Corp. (an urban renewal agency), and the property owner, the First Presbyterian Church. Other university-run incubators include a tech business facility in Moscow and a light manufacturing incubator in Caldwell. 
• The Advanced Technology Center @ Historic St. Charles is the second tech business incubator to be opened by the Economic Development Center of St. Charles County in Missouri. The organization's first facility already houses 34 businesses, and less than 10 percent of its space is available for new tenants. The new incubator has room for up to 24 offices and business assistance in 8,700 sq. ft. of space. 
• High-speed Internet access permits tech businesses to be located anywhere. The Detroit Free Press recently carried a lengthy feature on the success of the Entrepreneurial Center, a 70-year-old former-parochial school converted into an e-business incubator in the Village of Lake Linden, Mich. The article also points to two nearby tech incubators being developed in Houghton-Hancock —one focused on industrial technology on the campus of Michigan Technological University and another public-private partnership involving the university in one of three Smart Zones created by the state. 

Other tech business incubator projects recently in the news include: 

• The Babcock Demon Incubator facility, part of a $1.1 million Triad Entrepreneurial Initiative launched in Winston-Salem, N.C., in connection with Wake Forest University, is now accepting its first tenants. 
• A $200,000 Congressional earmark is making the concept of a Virginia Highlands Small Business Incubator a reality, as it will pay for engineering studies, site preparation and architectural drawings. The tech incubator will eventually be located in a six-acre Stonewall Research and Technology Park adjacent to the Southwest Virginia Higher Education Center in the town of Abingdon, Va. 
• According to a Nov. 25 article in the Chattanooga Times/Chattanooga Free Press, another Congressional earmark — this one a $1 million plum to construct a tech incubator in Tennessee's Hamilton County — may be used to pay for installing high-speed Internet access for the Chattanooga Business Development Center. The article reports the center, established in 1988 in a 70-year-old former manufacturing facility, has graduated 225 companies that employ more than 1,500 people. 

More information and resources on the benefits and uses of technology incubators can be found through the National Business Incubation Association's at: http://www.nbia.org