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Incubated
Businesses Thrive
by
Bruce Ito, Associate Community Affairs Specialist, Federal Reserve Bank
of San Francisco
Successful and innovative incubators that serve a
diverse clientele with a variety of products and services are located
throughout the Fed's 12th District. Incubators are not limited to urban
environments and cities; more and more, incubators are emerging in rural
areas as a way to diversify and stimulate the economy. In this series
of four articles, we go inside the places entrepreneurs go to get their
business off the ground.
Incubators provide more than just office space for
a start-up. The success of a business hinges on a multitude of factors.
In the lead article by Linda Knopp of the National Business Incubator
Association, she describes incubators as"service programs, not
just buildings…no building can grow companies, provide mentoring
and handholding, and assist an emerging company in meeting the benchmarks
necessary for growth."
The Renaissance incubator in San Francisco serves
over 700 entrepreneurs a year, and a remarkable 84 percent of businesses
that have graduated from their program are in business today. Sharon Miller,
CEO of the Renaissance Entrepreneurship Center writes about two graduates
of their program whose high tech business flourished because of the assistance
it received in Getting Off the Ground in San
Francisco.
While one-third of incubators focus on technology
companies, an array of businesses benefit from incubators. Dr. Myaing
Thein describes the Culinary Business Incubator (CBI) on the island of
Oahu, Hawaii in Cooking Up Business Aloha
Style. CBI assists low-income immigrants and refugees in starting
their own restaurants, helping to bring the cuisines of diverse cultures
to the mainstream population from a state-of-the-art kitchen in an unlikely
place.
Incubators are not only important vehicles to promote
small businesses development, they can also provide a unique opportunity
to revitalize communities. In Public/Private
Incubator Produces Redevelopment, Judi Dohn writes about the genesis
of the Henderson Business Resource Center (HBRC) of Nevada and its role
in the revitalization of a declining downtown. Learn lessons from this
exciting story about how leveraging public and private partnerships turned
a financial institution into a historic mixed-use facility that serves
the needs of blossoming small businesses.
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