SSTI Digest

There are a number of reasons why developing a business incubation program may be appropriate for your organization or community. Whether it is creating new jobs or developing and commercializing new technologies, business incubators can provide a variety of resources to help ensure that companies succeed. Two new handbooks document some of the best practices and successful business incubation models across the country.



Developing a Business Incubation Program

In Developing a Business Incubation Program: Insights and Advice for Communities, the National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) sheds light on ways to strengthen or expand business incubation programs. Because each incubator development project is different, a how-to book on the topic is not possible, NBIA states in a press release. Instead, author Kathleen Boyd spent more than a year interviewing experts and practitioners about the underlying assumptions, challenges and activities that are essential to the process.

Lenzie Harcum, former program director at the University of North Carolina SBTDC, is now assistant vice president of biosciences at the NYC Economic Development Corporation.

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute named Nag Patibandla as director of the Center for Future Energy Systems, a New York State Center for Advanced Technology.

Anne Conroy was named president of the Dutchess County Economic Development Corp., a nonprofit agency in New York.

Temi Bova is the new director of Union College's U-start technology business incubator in Schenectady, N.Y.

On Jan. 26, New York Gov. George Pataki and State Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno announced legislation to create a $200 million Biotechnology and Biomedicine Research Initiative through the New York State Charitable Assets Foundation.

The new program would provide challenge grants that are expected to generate an additional $600 million in federal, nonprofit and private sector matching funds to expand biotechnology and biomedicine R&D at public and private academic and nonprofit biomedical research institutions throughout the state.

Roger Biagi was named to the newly created position of director of government relations at the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research.

Robert Chernow was appointed to the newly created position of vice provost for entrepreneurship at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Jim Denn was named deputy executive director of the New York State Office of Science, Technology and Academic Research (NYSTAR).

Michael Tentnowski is the new director of the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute Incubator.

A community essentially has two options for strategies to diversify its economic base: traditional economic development or technology-based economic development (TBED). The traditional approach of recruiting or inducing companies to relocate to their community from elsewhere creates an atmosphere of competition, rivalry and one-upmanship among cities and regions as they bid to buy firms' location decisions. Often, it is also difficult for small and mid-sized communities to compete on these terms. The result, particularly with large manufacturing facilities, can be publicly financed incentive packages that may prove economically more expensive to a community than the benefits promised by the new development. Increasingly, economic development professionals are learning those promised jobs may never fully materialize.