INCUBATOR
the county, the city of Delaware and Ohio Wesleyan University, meant to encourage innovation in the area.
The three entities have teamed up to launch the Delaware Entrepreneurial Center, intended to support start-up businesses, spur economic development and provide students with hands-on learning opportunities.
Ohio Wesleyan’s Stewart Annex, on South Sandusky Street, will house the new center. The city and the county each have agreed to commit $50,000 a year for five years to support the entrepreneurial center. Ohio Wesleyan will oversee Stewart Annex renovations and contribute $100,000 toward the project.
The center, which is scheduled to open in August, will include rentable office space, a shared work area, a conference center with digital meeting capabilities and educational programming aimed at entrepreneurial success. The county and city both will have access to office space in the center to help businesses as they grow.
“We see this space as a place that allows a person from the community to maybe jump into this and have a home, have people
they could count on,” said Daniel Charna, assistant professor of economics at Ohio Wesleyan and a main collaborator on the new center.
A seven-member advisory board with representatives from the city, county, university and local entrepreneurial community will oversee the effort.
The creation of such a center was critical to the city and county, which had been exploring options for several years, representatives from the two government bodies said.
“This is a very unique model that will be of a lot of interest to our residents who may be thinking about launching their own business,” said Bob Lamb, Delaware County development director. “This was a needed resource within our community.”
The planned center is the latest example of Ohio colleges forging alliances with local governments and business leaders to drive innovation. In 2016, Otterbein University opened The Point, an innovation center focused on science, technology, engineering, arts and math intended to commercialize ideas. In 2011, Ohio State University established its Technology Entrepreneurship and Commercialization Institute, which aims to aid in the
commercialization of innovative technologies and train and consult with entrepreneurs.
In 2012, the thenNational Business Incubation Association estimated that about one-third of business incubators in the United States were at universities, according to The New York Times. That organization, now focused on business innovation around the globe and re-branded as the International Business Innovation Association, doesn’t have updated statistics on collegebased centers.
But there continues to be a large number of incubators or innovation centers on campuses, said Andrea Wesser-Brawner, the organization’s senior director of content and research.
“A lot of universities have incubators,” she said. “And that’s because they have multiple routes of revenue.”
Do these buzzwordladen incubators/ innovation centers/ accelerators/entrepreneurship centers actually work?
Just ask Ohio University, which launched one of the first university-based business incubators with its Innovation Center in the 1980s, aimed at growing the southeastern Ohio economy. It’s had support from a number of partners including venture
capital firm TechGROWTH Ohio and Ohio Third Frontier, a state tech development commission.
In 2016, the Ohio University Innovation Center supported 227 jobs in the area, generating an estimated $10.1 million in employee compensation in Athens County that year. Innovation Center businesses also generated an estimated $1.1 million in local and state tax revenue, according to the Innovation Center’s annual report.
“Every college and university should use their expertise to benefit their community and region while at the same time allowing opportunities for students, faculty and staff to garner skills that will help their career,” said Stacy Strauss, director of the Ohio University center.
Yet, as colleges and their partners continue to grow these innovation-focused centers, they’re not worried about stepping on one another’s toes.
“I don’t see entrepreneurship as a saturation-type industry,” said Megan Ellis, administrative director of Ohio Wesleyan’s Woltemade Center for Economics, Business and Entrepreneurship. “The more that that mindset is out there, the better.”