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Economic development specialists offer blueprint for area

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By John Nolan, Staff Writer 10:45 AM Friday, September 24, 2010

DAYTON — Communities that define and promote their business identity and then attract and help build companies in that niche are following a trend that works, economic development specialists said Friday.

The speakers addressing the “Cities in Transition” forum at the Dayton Engineers Club endorsed some of the strategies that Dayton already has under way. They include a business incubator to nurture companies that are more likely to stay if they make it; identifying key industries to attract and support, and building a community identity as home to particular specialties.

Dayton has a city-backed business incubator; Ohio anointed Dayton a year ago as the state’s hub for aerospace innovation and opportunity, and the region is pushing development in aerospace research, information technology, advanced materials, human sciences and health care.

Carol Lauffer, a partner in the California consultant firm Business Cluster Development, and Paul Krutko, chief development officer for San Jose, Calif., both endorsed publicly supported business incubators as an effective way to encourage growth of startups and help communities build desired industries.

“The statistics show that 84 percent of incubator businesses stay in the community,” Lauffer said.

Her firm helped with the startup of the Dayton RFID Convergence Center in Dayton’s Tech Town development. The center focuses on radio frequency identification technology, incorporated in tags used by companies to track inventories and distribution of their products.

Although San Jose has built its reputation as the hub of Silicon Valley, northern California’s software and high-tech innovation region, the city-backed business incubator has also nurtured other companies that diversify the economy, Krutko said. Diversifying has helped downtown San Jose not to be so economically dependent on the 3,000-employee headquarters of software developer Adobe Systems Inc., he said.

Dayton was dealt a blow in 2009 when its last Fortune 500 company, NCR Corp., announced plans to move to the Atlanta area.

Attracting the best and brightest talent from other places has also been a focus in San Jose, Krutko said. Forty percent of the population in San Jose, a city of about 900,000 people, is foreign-born, he said.

CityWide Development Corp., the city of Dayton’s development arm and developer of Tech Town, hosted the forum Friday that also featured Jeffrey Finkle, president and chief executive officer of the International Economic Development Council.

Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2242 or jnolan@DaytonDailyNews.com.

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