Business incubators and technology parks would play a key role in anchoring regional innovation clusters across New York State, according to a vision laid out in a report published recently by the Public Policy Institute (PPI), the research affiliate of the Business Council of New York State, Inc.

Entitled Transcending the Hamster Cage: Unfettering New York's Static Innovation Economy, the PPI report is available for download here with supporting data here.

The report includes both PPI's own recommendations and a series of personal essays, including a very interesting one signed by Alex Brownstein of Integrated Tissue Dynamics, LLC. Alex is the former manager of the incubator program at the SUNY Albany East Campus, and one of the original incorporators of this association. 

Nasir Ali, who five years ago started up our supporting member the the Tech Garden, will leave to team up with high-tech entrepreneur Martin Babinec on Upstate Venture Connect, an online community that will help connect upstate entrepreneurial resources with each other, and upstate "expats" worldwide to aspiring entrepreneurs upstate.

Incubation programs at the Syracuse Technology Garden will continue to be directed by Tech Garden Vice President of Entrepreneurial Services Paul Brooks, and the affiliated, NYSERDA-sponsored Cleantech Center by Executive Director Linda Dickerson Hartsock. Martin Babinec is a native of Little Falls who resettled upstate after a successful run as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

Please see the Tech Garden's complete press release for more background. News coverage in the Post-Standard here. Congratulations, Nasir!

Extending a series of recent articles touching on business incubators, the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle has published an excellent review of how Rochester's economic future will be determined by entrepreneurial startup companies of the kind found at business incubators.

The article quotes William Destler, president of Rochester Institute of Technology, where our supporting member the Venture Creations incubator has been the subject of two other recent stories in the D&C, and which hosted our association's annual meeting last year, bringing a small international trade delegation to Rochester.

It also quotes Jim Senall, the president of High Tech Rochester, the University of Rochester affiliate that owns and operates our member the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center and manages on behalf of UR another member, the wet-lab equipped Rochester BioVenture Center. Jim was also recently invited to Washington to participate in a dialogue on innovation and entrepreneurship. 

Robert (Bob) Herz, a former staffer at the New York State Senate, has been appointed the new director of our member the South Side Innovation Center, a microenterprise incubator sponsored by the Falcone Center for Entrepreneurship at Syracuse University's Whitman School of Management. 

While working for state Senator Martin Golden of Brooklyn, Bob was involved in structuring the future development of BioBAT, a project affiliated with our supporting member SUNY Downstate Advanced Biotechnology Incubator. We offer Bob a warm welcome to his new role at SSIC!

For more background, please see the university press release at the first link above or here.

James Senall — who as president of High Tech Rochester has oversight over two of our member incubators, the Lennox Tech Enterprise Center and Rochester BioVenture Center — participated by invitation in the Obama administration's Federal Interagency Roundtable on Regional Innovation Clusters and Entrepreneurship. The HTR website captures press coverage here. 

Two of our member incubators in the Long Island City section of Queens — Mi Kitchen es Su Kitchen at the Artisan Baking Center and NY Designs at CUNY's LaGuardia Community College — are featured in an excellent story on business incubators in the Queens Courier community newspaper. The story quotes the respective managers Kathrine Gregory and Natalia Arguello and also tenants of both incubators.

"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.

Robert H. Fritzinger, a serial telecommunications entrepreneur and lifelong resident of Western New York, has been named the new director of our supporting member SUNY Fredonia Technology Incubator.

He takes over the reins in time to preside over the Dec. 21st grand opening of the Fredonia incubator's new 21,000 square-foot, two-story facility on Central Avenue in the City of Dunkirk.

Bob will be moving his latest venture, Zenhire, from the Technology Incubator at UB into the Fredonia Incubator as one of the early tenants, among a planned total of 30.

For the official university release, click here. For additional coverage in Buffalo Business First, here. Congratulations, Bob!