Art Patterson, executive director of Flagship Enterprise Center in Anderson, provides his thoughts on the importance of the community being involved and supportive of incubators. He also discusses the role of the incubator in the development and success of the companies within incubators.

In 1998 just getting the words high tech in our communities’ vocabulary was no small feat. We were conditioned to believe that we would continue to be an industrialist manufacturing community. That was who we were and where we were always going in search of the “big one” i.e. manufacturing plant. Main Street RWC believed that there were high tech opportunities right here in Richmond/Wayne County for budding entrepreneurs if they were cultivated, fostered and the right types of infrastructure were in place. It was going to take a culture change. We needed to create the environment, educate the community, elected officials and community leaders on the importance of diversification of our economic development efforts. We decided to hold a tech summit and invite a Richmond native Michael Hothouse, a Serial Entrepreneur to be the Keynote speaker. Michael’s company Paranet, Inc was sold to Sprint for 200M.

Michael said something that I continue to remind myself of still today in how far we have come. He shared with the audience that when he was invited to speak that he heard two words that he thought he would never hear together- Richmond and technology and how excited he was as an entrepreneur to learn of our efforts to position our community for the global market place. Since his visit our communities’ vocabulary has changed words such as; Incubators, Uptown Innovation Center, Life Science Initiative, Biomedical Education, Advanced Manufacturing, Certified Tech Park, Nanotechnology, Entrepreneurship, AgriScience and the high tech words go on and on. Our communities’ culture has changed a lot since 1998 and continues to evolve never as quickly as we would like; but we still continue to look at our community in the eyes of an entrepreneur; a community of possibility and opportunity.

Renee Oldham, CMSM
Executive Director
Main Street RWC, INC.
Urban Enterprise Association
Uptown Innovation Center

Jan Hendrix, general manager of Inventrek Technology Park in Kokomo, provides her insight on the value of having a formal association for the State's various incubators to join where the incubators could have a resource for technical assistance and best practices. She also believes the incubators from around the State could benefit from having interaction with each other.

One of the key discussions we had the other night with incubator executives from around the state revolved around this issue: "Indiana was famously entrepreneurial a century ago...is it still today? If so, is it simply less obvious or do we need to find ways to really let it blossom?"

The dinner discussion was graciously sponsored by Ice Miller and superbly hosted by Gerry Dick. It was a great set of folks to wrestle with this issue. When you think about it, our state - a hundred years ago - was incredibly active in auto manufacturing, machined parts manufacturing, primary steel production and oil refining - among many other commercial and agricultural activities. These commerce activities were most often driven back then by the enterprise's founder and were not limited to the industrialized urban centers. Even today, vestiges of those early entrepreneurial pioneers remain with us as foreign auto manufacturers, steel mini-mills, and even metals recovery operations vie for operating locations in Indiana. But with the dramatic changes in economic drivers across the globe, does Indiana still have home-grown entrepreneurs capable of creating commerce in the emerging industries of various technologies and life sciences? I believe the answer is a resounding YES. I also believe the challenge we are increasingly facing is to smooth the way for these entrepreneurs to be successful. And that "smoothing" process involves every fiber of this state's economic fabric. From funding sources and private equity to state and local governments, we need to continue to find ways to enhance the odds of our entrepreneurs succeeding. I think the current call to action is for those most actively involved in incubation to begin looking for the commonalities in our challenges and to join forces across the state to address them with a unified voice.

John M. Hanak
Director
Purdue Technology Center of NWI

Mark Long, president and CEO of the Indiana University Research and Technology Corporation, discusses how the incubators would benefit from the State becoming directly involved with the incubators, either organizationally or financially. He also extends an open invitation to anyone interested in learning more about what incubators provide.