West Virginia University is teaming up with two other research universities to pinpoint the strengths and weaknesses of rural economic development business incubators.

WVU’s Regional Research Institute (WVU RRI) is part of a national initiative that has received $499,965 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture and includes experts from George Mason University and Florida International University.

Business incubators vary in the way they deliver their services, in their organizational structure and in the types of clients they serve. But all are designed to accelerate the successful development of entrepreneurial companies using an array of support resources and services, developed and orchestrated by incubator management and offered both in the incubator and through its network of contacts.

Successful completion of an incubation program increases the likelihood that a start-up company will stay in business for the long term. Historically, 87 percent of incubator graduates stay in business, according to the National Business Incubation Association.

WVU RRI Director Randall Jackson said the new USDA initiative is focused on creating evaluation tools that can be used to measure success in rural business incubators. A key element of the initiative will be to develop a new survey tool that will deliver data comparable to data from incubators in big cities.

“Existing evaluation tools have been lacking,” Jackson explained. “Rural business incubators simply cannot be evaluated and compared to business incubators in larger cities. We have seen a critical bias against the rural efforts when evaluation criteria for more urban incubators are applied. This initiative will create, for the first time, evaluation tools that can help leaders make reasonable decisions about incubators. That is important because these incubators are critical for fostering new business efforts. Funding sources have to know how they are performing and unless new tools are created, they are simply working in the dark.”

The project is expected to result in several valuable new products including:

• An evaluation toolkit for business incubators that will include a description of the problems rural incubators face, methods for addressing the problems and measurement instruments and instructions for evaluation of rural business incubators.

• A handbook for policy makers and practitioners in business incubation, entrepreneurship nurturing and rural development. The handbook highlights the challenges and opportunities for rural incubators, develops policy tools and action plans addressing identified challenges and provides a strategic focus on the needs of the development of business incubators and quality entrepreneurship in the economically distressed areas.

• A new curriculum, which emphasizes the interconnection between entrepreneurship and rural development.

“Part of WVU’s mission is to engage its constituency in ways that improve economic development and apply new knowledge to solving problems,” Jackson said. “This effort very much applies to that goal and can lead to more effective economic development in rural areas.”

-WVU-

09/15/09

CONTACT:
Randall Jackson
(304) 293-8734

What ideas do you have that would help improve the business climate in West Virginia, particularly in rural areas?