new web site for ybi now up

a revamped website for the Youngstown Business Incubator is now up and running at

www.ybi.org


the Frequently Asked Questions section is especially well done, for those looking to understand what the YBI is all about. (link here for FAQs)

flip through ybi's Technology Forward 2009 magazine

The "Youngstown Business Incubator" is a set of three words that has been popping up all over the place.

Whether you've heard the words on the floor of the U.S. Senate, you've read them in this week's international print edition of The Economist, or you've seen them adorn buildings in downtown youngstown, the YBI presence and economic impact is continually growing.

But do you, dear reader, actually knows what goes on within those walls?

If you're curious, or if you know the generalities but not the specifics, then please check out this magazine:


The following link
http://flipseekllc.com/gl2009ybi.html

will take you to a 28 page overview, highlighting the philosophy, the companies, and the various projects that are taking place through the YBI.

in school, it would be referred to "required reading".

read it online, print it out, email to a friend...

and become further informed on what is going on in downtown youngstown.

YBI and WCBA launch internship program

Have you ever wanted to work at the YBI?

Well, the award-winning Youngstown Business Incubator is partnering with YSU's Williamson College of Business Administration (WCBA) to launch the Entrepreneurial Internship Program (EIP) this fall.

The goal?

Expose students to entrepreneurship and increase their understanding of what is necessary to create and grow a new venture, explore new markets, and develop a customer base.

Interns will be placed with YBI and its Portfolio Companies, and will work for one semester for a total of 225 hours. Their salaries will be paid by YBI and WCBA’s Monus Entrepreneurship Center.

4 positions were awarded for fall 2009:

- Rose Shaffer, a senior marketing management major, will work with BizVeo which offers an internet-based, video training and competency testing solution.

- Jessica Sferra, a senior business administration major, will assist SenSource, a technology company that provides traffic and vehicle counting solutions and environmental sensors, with its marketing initiatives.

- Arianne Morris, a senior business administration major, is interning with Syncro Medical Innovations which has developed a unique magnetically guided feeding tube.

- Courtney Vitullo, a senior management information systems major, will work directly with YBI to promote new entrepreneurial programs with YSU and social media applications.

can you be next?

One simple step in connecting the the existing networks for updates:

LinkedIn GY2.0 - facebook - myspace

- - -

another good opportunity to connect is at the YBI's monthly Innovation Series seminars.

next one is September 24th - 3pm - Thursday (week from today)

Summer Garden Food Manufacturing will host a presentation on environmental stewardship, social responsibility, and technology.

Besides a leading integrated production space, its new $12 million facility includes a research and development area, an innovative safety and quality lab, a culinary art center, and a process engineering development facility.

note: the program will be held at Summer Garden Food Manufacturing located on 500 McClurg Road, Boardman, OH 44512 - not downtown.

The program is free to attend, but reservations are greatly appreciated. Reply to Julie Michael Smith, Chief Development Officer, Youngstown Business Incubator at jmsmith (at) ybi.org or 330-259-7644.

a closer look inside The Semple

Tucked right next to the Home Savings building on Federal Street is the Semple Building, which has had a really interesting history as a structure over the years. (more on that history later)


Its current renovation will enable the Semple to become the 3rd structure of the Youngstown Business Incubator complex, with all three buildings connected for the employees of various technology companies to walk back and forth and interact.

Here's a shot of the exterior:


but what's the current status of the construction on the inside?

let's take a look...


Simply put, the Semple Building is a 17,357 sq ft four-story filled with a melange of different types of wood and varied brickwork. In the many nooks and crannies of the building, one can see how the structure has developed over the years.

For example, large cut stones fill in the area in the basement.


Also in the basement, one can see the access tunnels that lead to underneath Federal Street. At some point, these access tunnels were bricked over.


As bricks were added over the years, many locations have multiple layers of the material.

Here's a bricked-in archway...


Here's a section with four different types of brick in one view...


Going up to higher floors, the new steps meet the old bricks...


the view from the 2nd floor of the Warner Theater and the Ford Theater...


and on the top floor, the original skylights will illuminate the space of a future downtown company...


finally, here is the finished product, with one quadrant of the building already inhabited...


it's shaping up to be a nice project.

can you envision your technology company in these kind of spaces?

then come to downtown youngstown and set up shop.
the doors are open for the next generation of entrepreneurs.

more photos and video of Tour of the Valley 2009

Just in case you missed one of the cooler events (out of many) that took place downtown, here are some additional photos and video of the 2009 Tour of the Valley event.


multiple races were held throughout the day, with one of the early morning ones below:




During the last stage of the race, the many many bikers on the Fallen Officers Run just about crossed paths with the cyclists' course. This is a great clip.



The awards for the Tour of the Valley. Very Youngstownesque.















in front of Turning Technologies:



zooming past the YBI:





beautiful video...beautiful setting.

you've GOT to love those tree-lined medians.

YBI on Senate floor - improving bit by bit

from Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown:

Center of Excellence in Industrial Metrology and 3D Imaging is up and running

what is metrology?

metrology = metron (measure) + logos (study of)

metrology is the study of how we measure things.

For example, say I wanted to measure the mass of water in a bathtub.

If I knew the volume of the tub by measuring its dimensions, since I know the density of liquid water, I could calculate the mass.

Or, if I had a small bucket and a scale, I could measure the cumulative weight of every bucket removed, and since I know the gravitational constant, could calculate the mass.

Of, if I opened the drain, and I measured the flow rate, plus I measured the amount of time to drain the tub, I can calculate the mass too.

In each case, the ability to measure things makes my task possible.

But I can only measure things if I have the right tools.

- - -

At M*7 Technologies located in Youngstown, they use scanning equipment to measure a given space or object. After they scan something, it requires an awful amount of data storage, depending on the level of tolerance (measuring something on an inch scale and a micron scale makes a big difference).

With a partnership between M*7 Technologies (a Youngstown Business Incubator portfolio company), Zethus Software (another company residing in the Youngstown Business Incubator who works on distributed computing), the YBI itself, Youngstown State, the Ohio Supercomputer Center, and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or NIST (these guys maintain the U.S. atomic clock, among others) - the Center of Excellence in Industrial Metrology and 3D Imaging was born.

And so Friday, a $1.6 million check was given to this Center of Excellence. It will be the official national test bed for three-dimensional imaging metrology.



from an article in the Business-Journal:

"The new center will be led by Allen Hunter, professor of Chemistry at YSU, and a team from the university’s Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, or STEM, College.

Hunter said earmarks such as the $1.6 million procured through Ryan’s office are vital to changing the role of the university and furthering new research and development projects. He credits the congressman for understanding the importance of local universities and the impact they can have on economic development.

“Federal dollars supporting research and development have increased ten times” compared to what they were a decade ago, Hunter noted.

Martin Abraham, dean of the STEM College, said a primary reason why the university is able to land funding for these important projects is because YSU has found a way to share ideas and information with various departments in science and technology, and establish partnerships with local businesses.

“A few years ago, this would never have happened,” Abraham said. But combining the science, technology, mathematics, and engineering departments into a single college under the direction of one dean enables the university to draw from a variety of intellectual resources.

The Metrology Center is an outstanding example of what collective action can accomplish, Abraham said. “As manufacturing becomes increasingly more complex, it is ever more important that we can measure parts and design tools accurate to the nanometer scale,” he said. “Now, with everyone working together, we’ll be looking for ways to work with companies such as M7 and Zethus.”

He also noted the college is examining the potential of starting Ph.D programs in material sciences and engineering."

- - -

good work, Team Youngstown.

three Centers of Excellence down, hopefully 17 more to go.

npr today: "there is good economic news, and it comes from youngstown"

About 13 million listeners nationwide (give or take a few hundred) tuning into NPR's Morning Edition show on Tuesday definitely heard this story:

Youngstown, Ohio: The Rust Belt's Silicon Valley?


You can listen to the clip here, as Steve Inskeep begins:

"There is good economic news, and it comes from Youngstown, Ohio.

Part of the city is seeing a renaissance due to high-tech startups housed at what's called the Youngstown Business Incubator."

And by 11:30am, just hours after the story aired, inquiries about the YBI and its companies came via email from Nashville, Boston, New York City, Minneapolis, Chicago, Naples, St. Petersburg, Ann Arbor, Seattle, Houston, San Diego, San Jose, Detroit, Lexington, Charlotte, Denver, Portland, and Baton Rouge.

And that was before lunch!

I wonder how busy the phones were at the YBI for the rest of the day.

- - -

For any individual - born in the Mahoning Valley or any place else on this earth - you can follow the news of the YBI via MySpace here, or via Facebook both here and here.

For any entrepreneur - with only an idea, or looking to beta test a product - Youngstown is willing to listen to you.

For anyone who is curious - who has seen the building only from the outside, or only heard about Youngstown on the radio - come for a tour.

- - -

As an economic development professional operating outside of the YBI who comes into contact with business incubators across the country, here are some opinions on how the Youngstown Experience is different than others:

1 - YBI is a managed cluster, aka, a place where firms and individuals learn from each other due to proximity

at many other incubators, after a few years, you leave or graduate and are on your own - apart from your contemporaries

2 - YBI is primarily (not exclusively) focused on a particular technology: business to business software

at many other incubators, the businesses cover many areas, lacking focus and inefficiently using resources

3 - YBI is adjacent to learning institutions/beta testing sites/hospitals in a central business district

at many other incubators, the structure is a spec building in the middle of nowhere, no "knowledge spillovers" to use a term in the biz

4 - YBI is an urban laboratory for both technological and civic innovation, and will be implementing some very unique programs in the near future.

at many other incubators, low rent is the only main benefit offered to companies

- - -

You can follow a wide array of past stories about the YBI in the Shout Youngstown blog here. More from Burgh Diaspora here. More at Reason here. and more from Rust Wire here.

and kudos to Jim Cossler for his efforts to support his home city.

le semple, c'est simple

The Semple Building was the third structure to become a component of the rapidly expanding Youngstown Business Incubator campus in downtown youngstown.

And its outside will soon be getting a facelift.


here's a direct picture of the brick facade (post terra cotta demolition and pre-tech center construction):


and here are the two buildings on both sides of the Semple:


a critique:

What's to like about this design is that the brick integrity is being retained (as well as the rest of the building - the inside looks great too), which when mixed with the glass, will balance old and new materials. Nicely done.



What's not to like about this design is that in the rush to make cohesiveness between the Tech Center and Home Savings, the feel of building sequence is becoming increasingly monolithic.

The utterly architecturally horrific Children's Services Building and its slighty-nicer-but-still-ugly-step-sister of a building, the Voinovich Building, sit face to face to the YBI structures. See the twin tragedies here.

Taken together, now both sides of Federal Street between Hazel and Vindicator Square/Symphony Place lack street level interaction, and for someone interested in commerce or kinetic activity, is somewhat of a dead zone - and will remain this way for years to come because it is recent construction.

So as I walk from the Symphony, or the SMARTS Center, or the Ford Recital Hall, or the wonderful Overture restaurant, or the Mahoning Valley History Museum to the entertainment venues and restaurants towards central square . . .



. . . there is a sense of the dark side one must walk through to go between the patches of liveliness.

especially after business hours.

the downtown dormcubator and ybi news

A cool idea from our friends in Canada:

Last week, a combination business incubator & college residence at the University of Waterloo admitted its first group of 70 upper-year and graduate students to live in cohabitation at VeloCity, a home for young entrepreneurs interested in mobile communications and digital media.

UW spent $400,000 to convert the 40-year-old building into this modified space, which will include a wireless device lab, wi-fi, videoconferencing, hightened bandwidth, student presentation space, a LCD wall screen, and common areas to encourage collaboration. [picts here]

Any student who wants to live there must pass an interview process.

Applicants are asked questions about their technical and entrepreneurial abilities, and selected students are formed into project teams, each one partnered with an industry mentor to provide technical and business assistance.

And get this, towards the end of each term, the student groups will present their projects at a symposium populated by industry and investment capital representatives. According to the policies of the university, students would own the rights to any intellectual property they create.

- - -

so might a project like this take off in Youngstown?

You have one of the most successful mobile communications and software development business incubators in the country in downtown youngstown.

You have a new $34.3 million Gold LEED-Certified business school with planned space for student entrepreneurs being built two blocks from this incubator.

You have a mayor, a university president, and other community and political leaders who have a desire to populate the downtown with more residents.

You have a handful of structures in between the YBI and the new Williamson Business School (the Erie Terminal Building and the Kress Building for example), that can be converted into a similarly-modeled residence for business students and entrepreneurs.

so, what do you think?

- - -

On a side note, two press releases from the YBI went out this week.

First, some metrics:

In the last three fiscal years, the five ODOD-funded business incubators in Northeast Ohio (in youngstown, lorain, akron, cleveland, and mansfield) have created in aggregate 754 jobs, generated $304 million in revenue, attracted $81 million in investment capital, and sustained an annual employee payroll of $39 million.

bamn!

Second, some construction:

The Youngstown Foundation has contributed $25,000 for YBI's "INSPIRE!" project. INSPIRE! is a new program of YBI that will offer flexible development suites within their main building, with access to resources for information technology start-ups in the very early stages of formation.

snap!

Let's also think regionally for a moment. . .

What is the combined impact of the state-funded business incubators when the Pittsburgh region is added to the mix?

What are some other mega-regional metrics in Cleveburgh which would be worth promoting?

buckeye innovation zones (biz)

This week, the Ohio Department of Development released its Strategic Plan, full of lots of pretty pictures and some policy recommendations.


One of the report's various proposals is to create at least 12 of what the OhDoD is calling Ohio Hubs of Innovation and Prosperity (or OHIO, chuckle) - with one in downtown Youngstown.

from the 108-page report, which can be found here:

"Our Ohio Hubs of Innovation and Opportunity program will leverage our regional strengths to facilitate and catalyze the creation of at least 12 regionally designated places where knowledge and place-based assets intersect; places where innovation will flourish and places where opportunity will be generated. We will offer targeted resources to renew physical space and foster new business investment in each OHIO Hub."

So what might these OHIO Hubs look like?

Youngstown can look right at our neighbors for some answers, as Pennsylvania offers a similar program, the Keystone Innovation Zones (KIZ), through its Department of Community and Economic Development (DCED).

More can be found on the PA KIZ Program here, so while the Ohio version may be different, here are some of its main components:

Each zone is area contiguous to an institution of higher education, linked to other economic development partners/organizations such as private businesses, business support organizations, commercial lending institutions, venture capital companies, angel investor networks or foundations.

Innovation Grants are provided to institutions of higher education to facilitate technology transfer, including patent filings, licensing, intellectual property, royalty agreements and other designated resource needs. Grants may not exceed $250,000 per year and the program is supported for three fiscal years.

Planning Grants provide seed funding to KIZ Partnerships that may not meet the criteria for Zone certification, but would benefit from additional planning and development of their application. Generally awards are $25,000 to support a follow on full KIZ application.

Operations Grants support each Zone's Coordinator for administrative costs incurred in establishing and implementing the keystone innovation zone. Grants will not exceed $250,000 and will be reduced in subsequent years by 25%, 50%, and finally 75%.

Tax Credits can be offered to a KIZ company (as designated) to claim a credit equal to 50% of the increase in the KIZ company’s gross revenues. The credit will not exceed $100,000 annually.

so while according to the report, the OHIO Hubs won't be operational until two to four years from now, what can Youngstown do to prepare?

1 - look across the border to what works and what doesn't for success, since Pennsylvania has 29 of these zones. Check the KIZ zones list here, and contact at least the close ones located in Oil City, two in Pittsburgh, Erie, Beaver Falls, and Johnstown and discuss best practices.

2 - Start pushing and marketing downtown youngstown NOW as the place to be for technology companies to locate in the region. Proximity and density is key.

3 - Similar to the WIRED Nation created by forward thinkers in some of the country's WIRED regions through the Dept. of Labor, a similar site can be constructed to link Ohio's Hubs and share best practices with each other.

While more programs exist in Ohio's most recent Strategic Plan, now is the time to start strategizing as a region about next steps.

- - -

as a side note, an interesting and revealing critique of the Strategic Plan's goals can be found here at NullSpace.

"...one goal is for Ohio to achieve job growth at a rate 25% above any of its neighboring states. Those would include Michigan, Indiana, Kentucky, West Virginia and well, you know. In fact the lead measures (see page 6) are all defined by just doing better than those other 4 states and Pennsylvania.

Should those really be the goals for any state? I suppose Ohio could achieve that if things just went to hell in a handbasket in those bordering states, Pennsylvania included. Would that really be success? Not exactly a mega-regional view of economic development in that."

to be strong again

PolicyLink, a national non-profit research organization, today released a new report: To Be Strong Again: Renewing the Promise in Smaller Industrial Cities.


Click here to read an advance copy (5.1 MB pdf).

While a full synthesis of the report will be posted on this blog soon, the authors identify 151 smaller U.S. cities with an industrial heritage as its focus.

In the report's conclusions, both the Youngstown 2010 plan and the Youngstown Business Incubator were identified as best practices for other cities to emulate.

Today's Youngstown Vindicator has an article on the story behind the report:

Visits to Youngstown by officials with PolicyLink inspired the national public policy organization to conduct the study, said Radhika Fox, its associate director who wrote the report.

“The image of Youngstown is steel mills that are closed, nothing is going on and it’s a dying economy,” she said. “But when I was there, I saw a lot of exciting work happening. We were inspired by what we saw in Youngstown.”

more to come . . .

tech center officially opens, tech center officially filled

there's room for more people on this bus.

tech-based growth. downtown reinvestment. prospering companies.

- - -

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.

- - -

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.

Innovation Accelerator at YBI starting 3pm today

Next 3rd Thursday at 3pm at the YBI is today.

speaking:
Dave Karpinski from NorTech

topic:
The "Innovation Accelerator", a program to help Mahoning Valley manufacturers become more competitive.

The Innovation Accelerator is designed to drive innovation in small and medium size manufacturing companies. There are three main elements to the program: workshops exploring difference innovation strategies, peer groups where manufacturers can share best practices and experiences and Innovation Guides who help manufacturers implement their plans.

location:
Youngstown Business Incubator
241 W. Federal Street
Downtown Youngstown

reserve a seat:
by calling 330-259-7644 or jmsmith (at) ybi (dot) org

2nd look inside the new technology center

Well, the construction trailers have gone away and Shout Youngstown is bringing you the first pictures of inside the Technology Center, built immediately adjacent to the Youngstown Business Incubator.

Connected by interior hallways and miles and miles of cable, the emerging cluster of YBI buildings is rapidly taking shape. With renovation of the Semple Building currently underway, this three-structure complex will now assume an even larger role in the evolving economy of Youngstown and the redevelopment of our historic downtown.


Peering down the street, the facade of the new building is a departure from many of the brick and terra cotta buildings that line Federal Street.

Here is the main entrance of the building, which is a bit recessed from the natural plane of the sidewalk.


The structure is one of the most heavily-wired buildings in Ohio's Western Reserve, maybe the most wired building in the Mahoning Valley. Here is the nerve center of the building.

I'd put my server there.


Electric and data connections are abundantly visible throughout the structure.


This series of four tubes now run throughout the entire YBI complex, from the Reichart building through the Technology Center, and over to the Semple Building. It was be considered the "spine" of the complex, running data, voice, electrical and video stream throughout.


Initially much of the space will be the new home of Turning Technologies, as that company graduates from the incubation stage of the YBI. The managed cluster will be not only an adjacency of buildings, but an adjacency of technology companies learning from each other to become more competitive in the global economy.

The yellow on the walls is indicative of Turning's colors. The skylight to the left is bringing natural light down from the roof through the 3rd floor to the 2nd floor.


Peering up into the skylight . . .


and over to the glass-enclosured conference room.


The internal staircase is surrounded by glass, providing a glimpse of the kinetic activity within the building to the street level.


And looking out from the ground floor, to the home of the Youngstown Symphony, among other art organizations downtown in the DeYor Center.


Most people don't know this, but underneath the building is a parking structure.


The materials of the two buildings blend the new and the old, as this is the interface between the original structure and the new addition . . .


. . . which on the other side of the structure connects to the Semple Building.


And at night, the building displays its interior to the world.

Time to get the furniture in there, then all the people!


The new building is set to be immediatley filled - most of the space is now allocated.

With the departure of some of the "graduating" companies from the original "incubating" building, this frees up more space for new companies to enter the mix in the downtown.

- Affordable office space rates
- Two blocks away from a university of 13,000+ students and their research faculty
- A cultural hotspot in the Great Lakes region
- Historical and affordable housing in walking/biking distance

the pieces, one by one, are coming together.

1st look inside the new technology center

valued readers:

had the opportunity to make it inside the new Youngstown Technology Center this week. When construction is completed, the structure will connect to the Youngstown Business Incubator, and will be home for maturing companies that graduate from the YBI.

with both experienced and growing technology companies moving into downtown youngstown, this "managed cluster" of firms is growing into an even larger nexus for software development companies and their innovative partners, including the university just a few blocks up the hill.

let's peer inside . . .



shown above is the facade of the structure, as interior doors connect the Incubator to the Technology Center.

shown below is the view heading down federal street, as the Technology Center sits next to the Semple Building, also undergoing renovation currently for MORE tech companies. Then adjacent to the Semple is the landmark Home Savings and Loan.


Peering behind the blue tarp, we have the entrance to the building leading us to the inside.


Skylights running through the middle of the building will bring natural light to the lower floors.


And of course, miles and miles of cable will be spread throughout the building.


Here's a photo from the second floor with its yellow walls:


Each floor of the structure will have a kitchenette right in the middle for all of the floor's employees.


Here's a view from the back windows, looking out onto art deco home of the Youngstown Vindicator.


And finally, a view from the front windows looking out onto the multi-recital hall complex which houses the Youngstown Symphony, among other cultural organizations.


looks to be progressing nicely!

as the Tech Center finishes up in the next few weeks, more construction will shift to the Semple Building, to be followed by work on the beautiful Wells Building - the 4th structure of this cluster.

Youngstown is accelerating at a rapid pace - - jump on as we are moving forward.