Business incubators can reignite local economies
By Garry Boulard, Published February 11, 2009

Working with her fellow business students at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College (ABTCC) in North Carolina, Michelle Marcoux landed on a business idea: a fruit fly repellant called "Good Riddance" that comes packaged in recycled plastic bottles.

"The concept was good," says Marcoux, who is majoring in business administration. "But to transform that into reality, something more was needed."

That something more was the Business Incubator and Small Business Center at ABTCC, which gave substance to what had only been a plan on paper, resulting in the actual creation of the business, now owned by Marcoux.

"It wasn’t just learning about taxes and business law and how to write a business plan," continues Marcoux. "Those things I learned through the small businesses management class that I took at the college."

What was crucial was talking to an attorney and to people who know about branding and marketing, explains Marcoux.

"Those were the things that gave me a true understanding about how to make a business work," he says.

Those conversations also characterize a primary feature of ABTCC’s business incubator services, says Russ Yelton, the executive director of entrepreneurial ventures and business incubation at the college.

"We get people together who have similar goals and just let them learn from each other," Yelton says of the tenants who are enrolled in ABTCC’s business incubator program.

"It doesn’t matter which field they are in—food companies or light manufacturing or bio-technology—they are all experiencing the same thing," continues Yelton. "That’s why we think it’s important that they talk about and share what they are going through."

The program also provides counseling from experts in such fields as trademarks, licensing and marketing, as well as an array of seminars and workshops offered as continuing education.

With the creation of more than a dozen companies, which has also resulted in more than 50 new jobs, Yelton thinks the incubator program serves as a valuable economic development tool in a region of North Carolina that has lost both textile and manufacturing jobs.

The idea that such programs can address local economic needs has also partly defined the mission of the John Pappajohn Entrepreneurial Center at the North Iowa Area Community College (NIACC).

"We’ve seen increasing unemployment here as well as a decrease in population," says Jamie Zanios, director of the center. "In order to sustain what’s left and make it grow, we absolutely need to have more businesses here."

The center is one of several such facilities in the state, although it remains the only one of its kind at a two-year college.

Providing degree programs in entrepreneurship, the entrepreneurial center also offers consulting services for start-up and existing businesses.

Using such services as FastTrac, a national program that helps students develop a business plan, the Pappajohn center has partnered with state and local economic development agencies with the goal of creating more businesses.

"Just with the FastTrac program alone we have seen the creation of nearly 300 businesses," says Zanios, "Roughly 78 percent of them are still in business."

In addition, the center serves NIACC graduates who have gone into business.

"That’s something we like to see happen," Zanios says. "They have already taken entrepreneurship courses here and understand the importance of coming back as their business is growing."

Students have also returned as business owners to the Miller Business Innovation Center at Salt Lake Community College (SLCC) in Utah. One of several business centers at the two-year college, the innovation center is the largest public incubator of its kind in the state, housing more than a dozen technology-based companies.

"Through shared resources in one location, these businesses become almost partners to each other, whether it’s networking or sharing common stories," says Melanie Hall, professional and economic development marketing manager at SLCC.

"Economic development is fueled by small businesses," she says. "And we want to do everything we can to support and enhance that."

Responding to local needs is the main mission of the new Small Business Training Center at Baton Rouge Community College (BRCC) in Louisiana. Hurricane Katrina prompted the population in the state’s capital area to increase by nearly 200,000. The center hopes to encourage emerging small businesses and an expanding employment base with a wide variety of support services to help those people find jobs.

"We think what we are doing here is going to have a promising future," says Pat Green Smith, the executive director of the college’s center, which features a small business incubator program.

Providing office space, Internet access and both mail and telecommunications services to its tenants, BRCC’s incubator program is designed to create a workplace environment that’s not always available to new small businesses.

"A lot of emerging businesses find it cost-prohibitive to obtain all of the services we are providing for them," says Green Smith. "What we are doing is allowing them to grow while eliminating the cost of acquiring and maintaining these different services just when they are starting out."

Green Smith adds that BRCC officials were particularly supportive of the incubator idea given the historic role that small businesses have played in the economy of Baton Rouge.

"We have many large oil and gas plants in this area," she says. "But it is also known that small businesses are as important as the big plants when it comes to making our economy work."

A new business incubator program was also launched this fall at Adirondack Community College (ACC) in New York. The local economy has long been supported by medical manufacturing, but the industry has recently seen a spike in unemployment.

The Adirondack Regional Business Incubator will provide office and conference room space to incubator tenants and is designed to take businesses from conception to execution.

"We will work with these businesses for a period of a year, taking them through the leadership process and getting advice from more than 30 business executives in our community who are also a part of our incubator process," says Jeff Farley, the executive director of the incubator program.

What Farley calls the "student side of the equation" may be the creation of entrepreneurial classes at ACC. The college is working toward developing a degree program in entrepreneurship.

Farley adds that even though support for the business incubator program may be hard to come by in the face of a national recession, it is economic decline that makes such programs timely.

"Start-ups always happen when the economy is down. People are out there coming up with new ideas, but the banks are not likely to support anyone who does not have a well thought-out plan," Farley says. "That’s why these incubator programs are more important now than ever before."