More on Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute
What: The nation's largest and most comprehensive university-based program of assistance to business and industry.
Significance: Widely seen as the model for generating jobs and economic development through university research.
Where: Based at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta.
Size: 200 staff and students and a $20-million budget of state and federal funds and client fees.
Major Services:
- Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership — provides technical assistance and professional education to help companies become more competitive in world markets.
- Entrepreneur Services — helps Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build successful companies by providing office space and equipment, business and legal advice and technical expertise.
- Strategic Partners — brings Georgia Tech researchers together with companies needing complex, interdisciplinary research.
- Community Policy and Research Services — helps governments at all levels face the challenges of economic development.
- Commercialization Services — evaluates Georgia Tech inventions and helps form start-up companies around promising technologies.
When NCR announced in June it would be relocating its world headquarters to Georgia and building a new advanced manufacturing facility there, NCR chief executive Bill Nuti delivered a back-handed slap — intended or not — to the academic community he and his company were leaving behind.
“The opportunity to partner with top-tier academic institutions such as Georgia Tech was one reason among many that we made this decision” to pull up NCR’s 125-year-old roots in Dayton, Nuti told the media assemblage in Atlanta.
In an ironic twist, the University of Dayton is now in negotiations with NCR to purchase its former world headquarters building, and local political and business leaders are urging UD to put the building to the same uses that helped Georgia Tech lure NCR away.
“With Dayton being named an aerospace hub (and) with the amount of research it does, (UD) could be second to Georgia Tech with incubating businesses and bringing jobs,” Dayton Mayor Rhine McLin said last week.
Although details are still emerging from a possible deal between UD and NCR, it’s clear UD research is being closely tied to an effort to reverse Dayton’s fortunes. One key question: At a time when local and state governments are struggling to trim budgets, where will the money come from?
Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive university-based program of assistance to business and industry, with a staff of 200 people and a budget of $20 million. But even the Atlanta-based institute will face cutbacks next year — a loss of $1 million in state funding.
As an economic driver, Georgia Tech’s half-billion dollars in research funds is about five times the $96-million record set last year at the University of Dayton.
Even so, said UD graduate and state Sen. Jon Husted, R-Kettering, the university should be able to find the money to open and operate its own innovation center at the NCR site. “UD has been one of the best institutions in the state of Ohio in drawing down state and federal funding for worthy research efforts,” he said.
UD was 44th in the nation in research funding among private colleges in 2006, with $69 million, according to the most recent rankings from the Center for Measuring University Performance. By comparison, Ohio State ranked 11th that year among all American universities, both public and private, with $652 million in research.
UD needs to grow and diversify its research base, most of which is now defense-related, if it really wants to boost the region’s economy, said Tony Sculimbrene, executive director of the National Aviation Heritage Alliance. Buying NCR’s 1.1-million-square-foot headquarters would be a good start, he said. “UD needs more space if they’re ever going to have the momentum and clout to become a real driver of economic development.”
Help may be on the way. Ohio last month designated the Dayton region as a hub of aerospace innovation and opportunity. The announcement came just as Israeli business and government representatives sealed a long-term plan to work together in aerospace research and development for both commercial and military markets.
However, Gov. Ted Strickland declined to say how much money the state could make available to Dayton under the aerospace hub designation.
Business and research incubators in the U.S. and Canada nearly tripled between 1989 and 2006, from 390 to 1,100, according to the National Business Incubation Association. That’s because they deliver a lot of bang for the buck. A recent study by the U.S. Economic Development Administration found that business incubators generate up to 20 times more jobs than community infrastructure projects, such as building roads, bridges and water and sewer projects, at a low investment of $144 to $216 per job.
“Incubator” is a broad term for describing a variety of services that universities and governments can provide to help new businesses get off the ground and existing ones to thrive. Start-up companies can find cheap office space, access to expensive equipment and, most important, guidance from seasoned business people, attorneys and accountants. Existing companies can get help developing new technologies and products and cutting their costs through leaner systems of operation.
By partnering in incubators, universities and businesses can explore ways of commercializing groundbreaking research and creating new companies and jobs.
Incubators can also help entrepreneurs connect with people and institutions for financing their new companies. But finding enough venture capital, which tends to concentrate in major cities and on the two coasts, can be a challenge for smaller cities like Dayton, said Linda Knopp, a spokeswoman for the business incubation association.
Currently Dayton has five sites devoted to nurturing high-tech companies. They are:
- The National Composite Center for manufacturers of composite materials;
- DaytaOhio for information technology companies;
- The Entrepreneur Center for high-tech start-up companies of all kinds; and
- The Institute for the Development and Commercialization of Advanced Sensory Technology (IDCAST) and Radio Frequency Identification Convergence Center (RFID), both located at Tech Town just northeast of downtown.
A new incubator at NCR headquarters, devoted to commercializing research at UD and growing the aerospace industry here, could create a corridor of new homes and retail space north from Oakwood through downtown to Tech Town, said Louis Luedtke of BerryHill Partners, a consulting business for smaller companies seeking technology funding.
“Scientists and researchers could move easily from one hub to the other, and maybe want to live in between,” Luedtke said. “It’s a great strategic move for our community.”
Jim Hill, a manager at the Entrepreneur Center in Dayton, noted that 25 average-sized incubators of 40,000 square feet each could fit into the massive NCR building. Beyond housing an incubator, the space could be used for new labs, conference rooms, administration offices and classrooms, he said.
Small businesses and entrepreneurs now generate two-thirds of all new jobs in the U.S., said Matt Mayer, an economist at the Buckeye Institute in Columbus. A new innovation center on UD’s campus, he said, “will help Dayton grow the kind of technology-based economy they need to replace the manufacturing economy they’ve lost.”
Contact this reporter at (937) 225-2437 or jdebrosse@DaytonDailyNews.com.
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