The incubator is part of the Howard County Economic Development Authority's Center for Business and Technology Development, which provides a range of related services to businesses in the incubator, said Michael Haines, senior vice president of small business development.
Entrepreneurs that are part of the incubator have access to seasoned entrepreneurs who provide counseling; a business funding advisory office; an international trade center; a Maryland Department of Business and Economic Development office; a SCORE office (service corps of retired executives); a Maryland state Small Business Development Center; and a resource library, Haines said.
The incubator is full, and the businesses that it nurtures keep graduating.
"We approached this purely from a non-government, entrepreneurial perspective," Haines said. "I don't have any experience in how the government works; this is my first experience in a quasi-government arena. Before that, I was in the high-tech entrepreneurial field."
The facilities and the programs created were designed to address everything an entrepreneur would need to make his or her business flourish.
"Everything is driven with the opportunity to be profitable," he said. "After this year, we don't get any government grants and things like that, so we've truly got to make this successful from a profit point of view, and I think that helped us get through this. The companies that come into the incubator realize that, 'This is an entrepreneurial place to be, and it's going to work for us.'"
The incubator uses a very rigid selection process to weed out businesses -- since it's been in operation, more than 100 entrepreneurs have applied to be part of the incubator, and only 12 have been accepted into the program, Haines said, noting that two have graduated in that two-year period and the other 10 are still in the program.
He attributes the success of the incubator to the relationship between it and the Howard County government.
"One of the key 'lessons' to be learned from our center/incubator program is that government and the private sector can co-exist very nicely to the benefit of all," he said. "It is not 'government getting out of the way and letting things happen,' but more of government and the private sector knowing where they add the most value to the program and using that value-add to make the program successful. Howard County's government, the Howard County Economic Development Authority and the private sector realized that early on in the program and have worked together as a team to make it happen quickly, efficiently and successfully. It is a great example of a public sector/private sector cooperation."
