tech center officially opens, tech center officially filled

there's room for more people on this bus.

tech-based growth. downtown reinvestment. prospering companies.

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This week, the opening of the 2nd building of the Youngstown Business Incubator was celebrated downtown, a building that is already filled from top to bottom with employees from YBI's portfolio companies.



Instead of bursting as the seams, the original building of the YBI is now able to breathe again, having the capacity to draw in additional entrepreneurs and individuals who want to be a part of the next chapter of Youngstown.

photo tour of 2nd building from I Will Shout Youngstown here.
additional stories here, here, here, here, and here.

An article titled "Specialization as Strategy for Business Incubators" by M. Schwartz and C. Hornych in the most recent issue of the scientific jounal Technovation identifies four advantages for locating businesses in sector-specific business incubators (SBI) like the YBI:

- high-quality premises and equipment for tenant companies
- high-quality consulting/knowledge sharing in specific fields
- increased probability of networking between tenants
- high trans-regional visibility for tenants

check, check, check, and check.

All four of these match what's going on in these buildings in downtown youngstown.

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In other news, two other YBI portfolio companies experienced some recent successes:

Humility of Mary Health Partners (HMHP) has agreed to be a a beta site for ErisRx, a software program from Eris Medical Technologies which manages billing and financial transactions in hospitals.

Syncro Medical Innovations was awarded a $350,000 research commercialization grant from the Ohio Department of Development's Third Frontier Initiative. Syncro has developed a magnetically guided feeding tube, and the funds will be used to build inventory, conduct clinical trials, and hire a clinical educator, staff engineer and marketing director. These funds are in addition to $500,000 provided by the federal government to Syncro for developing a feeding tube for battlefield trauma patients.

so, yeah, it's been a good week.

no time to rest though.