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Innovation Center helps businesses get off the ground
October 17, 2008
Starting a business requires a lot of resources and comes with a high risk of failure.
For those reasons, business incubator programs are designed to provide support for businesses to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies.
Ohio University’s Innovation Center offers business services, resources, and facilities to promote and aid entrepreneurship. The center features a business incubation program that provides management guidance, technical assistance, consulting, rental space, equipment, and assistance in obtaining financing. The goal of the program is to allow businesses to become financially viable and independent.
Through the program, Sang-Soo Kim, an associate professor of civil engineering in the Russ College of Engineering and Technology, founded EZ Asphalt. The company will market the Asphalt Binder Cracking Device, which Kim invented and the university has patented. Kim developed the device to determine which types of pavement perform best under stress from highway traffic and cold weather. It will be marketed to government agencies, private corporations, and research labs.
Kim received a patent on the device in August 2007 and has licensed the technology back from the university. In January, the Federal Highway Administration provided $239,000 in funding to help him commercialize the technology.
Kim’s device is one example of technologies that Ohio University has licensed to companies for commercialization. In 2008, the university received $5.9 million in royalty income.
The NBIA (National Business Incubation Association) has estimated that North American incubator companies have created about half a million jobs since 1980. Business incubators help small businesses reduce the risk of failure, as the NBIA reports that 87 percent of firms that graduated from NBIA member incubators are still in business.
Especially in difficult economic times like the present, programs to help entrepreneurs and small businesses have access to necessary resources and provide stability as companies enter the business world is important. Ohio’s business incubator program benefits the school through successful patents, the students and professors who have the opportunity to get involved, and the economy by helping new businesses grow.
Posted by Jessica MacNeil on October 17, 2008 | Comments (0)
