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ORLANDO, Fla.(December 30, 2008) --- For more than a generation, communities approached economic development the way one might approach
a new job---fancy-up the resume, shine the shoes, press the business suit and convince the corporate board room that you’re the one.
But a new approach to economic development is gathering steam in Central Florida and nationwide. Dr. Tom O’Neal, executive
director of the University of Central Florida Business Incubation Program, calls it ‘economic
gardening.’
Put simply, it’s more cost effective to “grow your own” economic development than to import it from somewhere else.
That approach is winning hearts and minds one community at a time. What began as the UCF Technology Incubator---which now counts more than
90 current and graduate companies that are earning accolades and employing better-paid university graduates in the region---has expanded
to encompass more industries and five central Florida programs with offices in Winter Springs, downtown Orlando and east Orlando.
Expansion efforts are underway to open facilities in Winter Park and in Osceola and Lake Counties.
“Traditional economic development efforts tend to focus on improving community infrastructure and luring large employers with incentives,” O’Neal
said. “That approach is still effective, but it results in little net economic growth for America. It’s a game of musical chairs, when what
we really need is more chairs,” he said.
O’Neal, who was recently named ‘2008 Business Incubation Advocate of the Year’ by the Florida Business Incubation Association,
knows how to make more chairs.
“Economic gardening’ invests in promising business models with cost-effective incubation assistance to accelerate the pace of business growth,” O’Neal
explained. “We have carefully studied business growth cycles. We can predict, with a high degree of certainty, which enterprises are more likely
to succeed. Among those enterprises, we can chart their ‘natural’ growth cycles. Once we know their issues, we can generate strategies to
accelerate those growth cycles,” he explained.
The end result? Left to its own, a business plan might reasonably target 100 employees by year 2010. With knowledgeable incubation
strategies, the same business could reach that milestone in half the time.
“That’s economic gardening,” O’Neal said.
Incubation isn’t a secret formula or magical ingredient. It doesn’t work with every company. The UCF Incubation Program rejects
more companies than it accepts.
“We look for scaleable companies that can grow and create jobs that typically pay higher salaries---cultivable companies that want to grow. We’re
not interested in people who just want a trophy address at the Incubation Program. But if they really want to be incubated, with clear intentions to
graduate the program, then we can help them,” O’Neal said.
Altogether, the UCF Incubation Program currently accommodates nearly 70 Central Florida companies. One client company recently won a major
contract to provide technology services to an Australian energy company. A second recently won a $1 million contract to use sophisticated
digital archival technology to preserve historic photographs for the US Golf Association. A third operates a web-based social networking
site that is already influencing the huge martial arts industry.
“We aren’t trying to cure cancer or send a space ship to Mars,” O’Neal said. “We’re trying to improve the economy
and create new, better-paying employment opportunities.”
But sometimes O’Neal’s self-effacing demeanor overlooks heroic goals. O’Neal’s biggest, most expansive and most
promising goal is a life-science incubator.
“That would help to commercialize some of the new sciences that will emerge from the Burnham Institute, the UCF College of Medicine, Burnett Bio-Medical,
Nemours and all the other life-sciences facilities that will start opening their doors within the next year,” O’Neal said.
For more information please contact:
Tom O’Neal. Ph.D, UCF Incubation Program Executive Director, 407-882-1120, oneal@mail.ucf.edu;
Larry Vershel or Beth Payan, Larry Vershel Communications 407-644-4142 Lvershelco@aol.com
About the UCF Incubation Program:
Since its founding in 1999, the UCF Incubation Program has helped more than 100 emerging companies (including nearly 70 current clients)
create over $500 million in annual revenue and more than 900 new jobs with an average salary of $59,000. With five facilities across
the metro Orlando community, the Incubation Program is a collaboration in economic development between UCF, Orange County, the City of
Orlando, Seminole County, the City of Winter Springs, and the Florida High Tech Corridor Council. For more information, please
visit http://www.incubator.ucf.edu |
