Towson University’s Outreach Blog

Clay

University-based business incubators such as TowsonGlobal not only support start-up businesses from the surrounding region, but also offer students a plethora of hands-on experience and practical knowledge before joining the workforce (see story from The Baltimore Sun special education section).

While the model may vary from one incubator to another, area entrepreneurs, students and others can tap into the incubator’s resources by paying affordable membership fees as either resident or associate members.  The incubator offers a wide variety of resources, including office space, mentoring, and networking assistance.  For instance, TowsonGlobal’s advisory board, brimming with advice from seasoned executives, is a great asset for member companies.

Affiliation with a university provides incubator companies ready access to faculty and staff for collaboration on research and development, for commercialization of university generated technologies, or other types of academic-business partnerships.  This also can provide an ideal avenue for finding enthusiastic and hardworking student interns.

At TowsonGlobal, for instance, over the last several years as many as 30 students have benefited from internships with participating companies as part of their academic programs. They have been assigned to companies where they have conducted market research, produced feasibility studies, and developed real business contacts for the incubator clients (see the TowsonGlobal YouTube video).

Encouraging entrepreneurship through incubators allows universities to provide great collaborative, educational experiences that benefit all… students, faculty/staff, entrepreneurs, and student entrepreneurs, too.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 22nd, 2010 at 2:23 pm and is filed under Business Analysis, Entrepreneurship, Small Business Development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.