BIA/NYS welcomes the newest sponsor of our website and email newsletter, Eastman Business Park. Now specifically targeting post-incubation-stage companies, Eastman Business Park offers tailored leasing arrangements for labs, clean rooms, offices and manufacturing space. Services available at this Kodak-owned facility include cost-advantaged utilities, rail/truck access, advanced analytical testing, pilot coating, prototyping, and packaging dynamics and materials characterization. For more information about the park, see this link or click the logo at left.

For the second time in a month, a state task force reporting to Gov. Paterson has highlighted the importance of business incubation to a robust economic future for New York State. This time it was the Governor's Task Force on Diversifying the NYS Economy Through Industry/Higher Education Partnerships, created under Executive Order 19. 

The final report:

• recommends that the state adopt business incubation as a central component of economic-development policy (one of our association's long-time policy recommendations);
• asks universities to align their practices to provide a range of commercialization support including incubators that are fully integrated with additional assets such as: business training for faculty and graduate students; entrepreneurs in residence; internal funds to launch new ventures; and alumni networks of potential executives, investors, and managers;
• identifies the percentage of university-incubated companies graduating to later rounds of investment funding as a key metric of success to be tracked by the state;
• notes our association's testimony and submitted white paper (available on request), and adopts clearly our own view that business incubation is about more than simply provision of shared space, and that value-added services such as business assistance and mentoring must be funded;
• highlights as a model of integrated commercialization services High Tech Rochester, whose Lennox Tech Enterprise Center is a valued member of our association;
• recommends additional state support — matched by private investment, and privately managed — for seed-stage investment (a topic on which the association is now on record).

The full task force report is available for download on the Governor's website, and the press conference video is here. The earlier report referred to above was of the Small Business Task Force, which also highlighted incubation.

"Development or enhancement of 7-10 technology incubators throughout the State" is one of the recommendations of the Final Report of the state's Small Business Task Force. The report was commissioned by Gov. Paterson and was received by him on Dec. 1st.

The report emphasizes our own view that to be fully effective, business incubators must provide connections to sources of seed-stage capital, management coaching and talent development, and technical and marketing assistance. To achieve these goals, the Task Force projects a cost of $500,000 to $1 million per incubator per year, but also potential gains of up to 10,000 jobs over 5 to 7 years.

The report recommends no new budgetary appropriations, but rather reallocation of existing resources, including federal funding where feasible.

Available for download here, the report was based on the work of more than 60 stakeholders around the state, including three task force members who play important roles in our member incubators:

• Linda Dickerson Hartsock, who directs the NYSERDA-supported Center for Cleantech Entrepreneurship at our supporting member the Syracuse Technology Garden;
• James Senall, who directs our member the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center of High Tech Rochester (HTR also manages our member the Rochester BioVenture Center for the University of Rochester)
• F. Michael Tucker, the president of the Capital Region's Center for Economic Growth, whose Watervliet Innovation Center homeland-security incubator is a member.

If you would like to comment on the Small Business Task Force report, you may use our public forum here. We will forward appropriate comments to the state.

The Venture Creations incubator at Rochester Institute of Technology, which hosted our last year's annual members' meeting, has voluntarily stepped up its membership in BIA/NYS to supporting status.

Venture Creations is situated on Tech Park Drive at the corner of the RIT campus. It focuses on incubating businesses that operate in sectors where RIT has educational programs, and also hosts the Student Business Development Lab of the Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and a clean energy incubator sponsored by NYSERDA. 

We warmly appreciate the additional support from Venture Creations, which is led by Jerome Mahone, a pioneer of business incubation in New York State.

Attached as a pdf is the association's testimony delivered today at the downstate public hearing of Gov. Paterson's Task Force on Diversifying the New York State Economy Through Industry/Higher-Education Partnerships (under Executive Order 19). 

Here are two images of our member incubators being presented to about one hundred international consular and trade officials participating in Gov. Paterson's October 1st trade mission to Long Island. Click on either thumbnail for a full-sized version.

SBU incubators at Trade MissionBHBP at Trade Mission

One image is of Dr. Yacov Shamash, VP for Economic Development and Dean of Engineering at Stony Brook University, presenting the three sites of the Stony Brook Incubator program as part of the range of SBU's economic-development activities. The other image is of Greg Blyskal presenting Broad Hollow Bioscience Park, which he directs. The images are used by kind permission of Empire State Development Corporation, which organized the mission.

The Long Island trade mission was described as the largest yet of the three undertaken in this administration. Previous trade missions to Albany and Buffalo also included some description of our member incubators, and last spring ESDC led a "mini-mission" of interested consular officials to our own annual meeting in Rochester.

Two pieces of legislation pertaining to business incubators – one at the federal level and one at the state level – were endorsed by the board of directors of the Business Incubator Association of New York State at its most recent meeting.

The federal bill endorsed by the association is S.1662, introduced by Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) and cosponsored by Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-New York). The state bill is A7229/S5419 known as the Academic Research Information Access Act, whose major sponsors in each chamber are Assemblyman Robin Schimminger (D-Tonawanda) and Sen. Bill Stachowski (D-Buffalo).

For more information please see the attached news release or keep reading after the break. Read more

Here is a recap of the four clean/renewable-energy incubators created as a result of contracts issued earlier in the year by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA). We are very proud that all four of these NYSERDA-sponsored clean-energy incubators are affiliated with business incubators that were already members of our association. Here is a table showing which programs have been announced, and providing links to press releases, fact sheets, and other materials as they become available.

And don't forget that NYSERDA's own Saratoga Technology + Energy Park® is itself a supporting member of our association. Here's a new video describing NYSERDA's "knowledge community" at STEP®.