UConn is endeavoring to create startup companies and inspire entrepreneurship as the innovation east hub in Connecticut’s new innovation ecosystem.
The UConn hub, officially called the Eastern Connecticut Innovation Corridor, will bring resources, expertise, and advanced technology to the eastern corner of the state to foster entrepreneurship and innovation with the hope of creating jobs.
The resources offered include a business accelerator and a venture capital clubhouse. These two initiatives help entrepreneurs who have an idea for a business to spend 10 to 12 weeks developing that idea with the aid of mentors, legal advisers, and counsel from experienced entrepreneurs.
The business accelerator is up and running, but the clubhouse will not launch until later in 2013. The hub is temporarily housed in the Gordon W. Tasker building at UConn’s Storrs campus.
In the fall, UConn is also introducing a small business development center as well as a new living-learning community, the latter being a residential place tailored for students at UConn who are interested in entrepreneurship and creativity.
The living-learning community will be called the CEO Creativity, Entrepreneurship, and Opportunity Living and Learning Community. There will be an overlap between the living-learning community and the innovation hub with activities, seminars, and guest speakers.
The innovation ecosystem is a multilayered, multilateral network created as part of the 2011 Connecticut Jobs Bill, which provides a five-year funding package to create jobs in the state. It is a joint effort by Connecticut Innovations and the Department of Economic and Community Development. The plans includes four hubs in Stamford, Hartford, New Haven, and UConn/Groton.
The Stamford Innovation hub officially opened in 2011. The New Haven hub, officially called The Grid, will launch on Feb. 25. The Hartford hub is still soliciting partners but will discuss its mission more broadly with the community at an info session on March 26 at the Lyceum in Hartford.
The decision to make UConn one of the four hubs comes from the hope of mining the intellectual property coming out of New England’s top public university, said Kip Bergstrom, DECD deputy commissioner.
The innovation ecosystem is part of a comprehensive statewide effort to create small businesses, and in effect spark job growth. Connecticut, a state with company giants such as Fairfield conglomerate General Electric and Hartford conglomerate United Technologies Corp., is lacking in the small business arena where the most jobs are created.
“Connecticut is long on large companies and short on small companies,” Bergstrom said.
Christopher Levesque, the executive director of the UConn Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, said Connecticut has struggled in terms of job growth especially by way of new companies.
“Net job growth creation has been spawned almost exclusively by the small business sector, and we need to do more in Connecticut to energize that,” said Levesque.
The birth of the innovation ecosystem was spurred by the need to create net job growth in Connecticut. The ecosystem is a joint effort by the state government and the entrepreneurship community. Bergstrom, who was part of the initial coalition that created the ecosystem, said the state government realized if it was going to intervene with public funding in the entrepreneurial community, it was better to listen first.
“We were willing to entertain the notion that other people had better ideas than we did,” said Bergstrom. “We wanted to see how we could blow on the sparks to spur the initiative along.”
Bergstrom and other members of the state government met with leaders in the entrepreneurship community. They looked at Silicon Valley, New York, and Nashville for examples of how to create more startup companies and create an enabling environment for innovation and creativity.
The innovation ecosystem is a flexible, learning network. Each hub offers a large variety of services to help entrepreneurs such as mentoring, coworking space, education services, business accelerator programs, and events or competitions that encourage innovation. Although each hub is a separate entity, they communicate with and help each other as they develop.
“Innovation is about not fearing failure, but embracing it,” said Casey Pickett, director of innovation at DECD.
The ecosystem also uses the strength in Connecticut’s established large companies to help create small businesses. For example Stratford helicopter maker Sikorsky Aircraft Corp. alongside the Stamford Innovation Center created the Sikorsky entrepreneurial challenge. Sikorsky poses a problem that needs a solution, and entrepreneurs attempt to solve the problem. The prize for winning is space in the Stamford innovation center and a partnership with Sikorsky.
“This is a model that could be scaled to other companies as well,” said Pickett.
Peter Propp, the vice president of marketing at the Stamford innovation center, said that sophisticated technology companies such as Sikorsky and Stamford mail equipment provider Pitney Bowes recognize the value of participating in the Stamford innovation center’s activities.
“Companies such as Sikorsky and Pitney Bowes have an incentive to participate in a center like ours to attract smaller businesses who may be able to partner with them and enter into new market opportunities that are strategic,” said Propp.
The mentoring services are most important in helping entrepreneurs translate their ideas into real companies, said Propp. Mentors include innovation hub staff, entrepreneurs from a network of mentors each hub uses, and peer-to-peer mentoring meaning one company to another, which Pickett says may be the most significant mentorship.
The innovation ecosystem is a successful example of how public-private partnerships can function to create jobs, Bergstrom said. Its success is due to the state’s support in areas that private sector experts deem it is needed, and the private sector using the state as a resource to achieve the mutually shared goal of creating net job growth in the state.
