Incubators can create jobs in other fields
10/30/2005
By Scott Wartman
The Herald-Dispatch
HUNTINGTON -- When other areas of the country provided space and equipment for researchers to develop new and marketable technology, high-paying jobs usually followed.
Some people hope the planned Velocity Center in Kinetic Park will have similar affects seen in Athens, Ohio, and Montgomery County, Md.
In 1983, Ohio University first took an old academic building in Athens and began to offer the space for start-up businesses.
The surroundings were humble but, over the next 20 years, the incubator evolved into a 36,000-square-foot building with fully equipped research labs and wired office space.
The biotech and other technology firms now dotting Athens' landscape show the effect incubators like the Innovation Center can have on an economy, said Linda Clark, director of the Innovation Center.
"What we are trying to do is diversify the local economy by helping entrepreneurs create companies that pay higher than average wages," Clark said.
The Innovation Center has graduated 14 technology companies still operating in the Athens area. The companies range from robotics companies to a biotech cell culture provider employing 160 people.
Companies usually stay in the incubator three or four years then move out.
Even the Innovation Center's fledgling companies have left their imprint on the Athens area, Clark said. The eight businesses in the Innovation Center in 2004 employed 153 people and generated $7.6 million in labor income, according to an Ohio University study.
The businesses in the incubator are almost exclusively homegrown, Clark said.
About half of the businesses started in the Innovation Center come from the work of Ohio University researchers and students. The other half come from enterprising entrepreneurs in the community.
Ohio University encourages the development of commercially viable products, Clark said. The university's Edison Biotechnology Institute hires professors and researchers with the mission to devise profitable inventions, she said. The university also allows each of its inventors to receive 50 percent of the royalties up to $100,000 each year and 30 percent for any amount more than $100,000.
"You need scientists," Clark said. "You hire good people and you give them the equipment and resources they need. You can't just come up with an invention overnight."
The Innovation Center, however, didn't immediately produce high profit companies to enrich the community. In fact, in the 1980s and early 1990s, many graduates of the incubator either went out of business or moved out of town not finding enough venture capital and resources in Athens to expand.
With the establishment of venture capital funds in Athens and the improvements to both the transportation and technological infrastructure, Athens can now retain many of the businesses that develop from the incubator.
"We are developing a cluster of biotechnology businesses where the region is going to keep them here because they have the infrastructure," Clark said.
Athens' experience with technology incubators is not isolated.
The Maryland Technology Development Center has also rewarded Montgomery County, Md., with 30 companies employing 1,000 people since the center's opening in 1999.
The 60,000 square foot, $8 million building has space for both biotechnology and other technology companies. The center houses minus-80 degree freezers, centrifuges, autoclaves and other equipment for companies to use.
Unlike Huntington or Athens, the biotechnology field already flourished in Montgomery County, Md., when the center began. Researchers from the National Institute of Health, Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Food and Drug Administration in Montgomery County have provided a potent cocktail of entrepreneurs to found many of the new companies spun from the center, said Duc Duong, program manager for the center.
International companies took note of the growing number of biotechnology firms in Montgomery County and have since moved into the center and area in recent years, he said.
"The economic impact has been tremendous," Duong said. "The incubator employees are more than 200 people. We have a combined 40 companies in the incubator right now. You can see the job generation."
