By i2e
Convergence happens here in an unassuming office building just north of the University of Oklahoma campus.
Call it Norman’s innovation melting pot.
Research, education and technology commercialization converge in 10 entrepreneurial businesses that call the emerging Technology entrepreneurial (eTec) center at 710 Asp their home.
It’s all “very Norman,” suggests Don Wood as he sits in his office in the eTec business incubator.
Wood is executive director of the Norman Economic Development Coalition, which owns and operates the incubator. He also serves on the board of directors of i2E.
What makes the incubator vital to the community is more than its location deep in the heart of Norman. Or that the Norman Economic Development Coalition recently opened a second eTec location just east of the Max Westheimer Airport in the north part of the city.
The incubator represents a do-it-yourself economic development mentality that sort of brands the city of Norman.
“Norman looks internally first, and they see themselves as kind of a free-standing, independent community,” Wood said.
“Help your own and grow your own, and those companies being based in your community and having kids in the school district and all those other things; there is a warm and fuzzy that Norman gets out of that aspect of it.”
All of which helps to explain how this 10-year-old business incubator established in an unassuming former office building consistently boasts an occupancy rate of 100 percent with a waiting list to get in.
There are usually about 10 tenants in the eTec’s Asp Ave. location, with another four in the newer building near the airport.
Another eTec feature that matches Norman’s do-it-yourself approach: It is self funded, with no federal or state grant money used to create and operate it.
“Most programs have some funding source, a tech system or a grant,” Wood said. “We’ve done it all on our own nickel.”
The Norman Economic Development Coalition is funded through a consortium of four Norman entities that each contributes $125,000 to its operation. The coalition was created in the mid 1990s to promote Norman’s economic development, with Wood hired in 1997 as its first director.
Funders are the City of Norman, the University of Oklahoma, the Norman Chamber of Commerce and the Moore-Norman Technology Center.
The NEDC’s mission includes four areas: take care of existing employers in the community; work to improve the city of Norman; job and targeted industry recruitment; and help to accomplish technology transfer, out of OU, for example into commercial businesses.
Most of the eTec tenants boast some tech-related aspect of their business, and many have spun out of OU ‘s nearby laboratories into the commercialization space offered.
However, the businesses housed here are being created by a diverse group of innovators that transcend the campus boundaries, said Ross Robinson, Director of Technology Development for the NEDC.
“”People who come into the eTec include those from the university, professors and so on, but it’s not exclusively so,” Robinson said. “About one-third are university related, about one third are former university people who have gone off to the world and come back and started companies, and about one third of them are just people in the community.”
In a former life, the eTec was primarily a medical office building. It housed doctors, dentists and other service type businesses in its 10,000 square feet of space, all on one floor.
“Our dream some day is to add a second story on this building and double the size of the incubator,” Wood said.
The 5,200 square foot eTec-2 facility on the north side of Norman boasts some features that he original incubator can’t offer. It has “high bay” space that allows for manufacturing and warehouse type operations. NEDC hopes to add three more bays to the back of the building and a wet lab if there is demand.
No one is on the clock at Norman incubator. Businesses can hold their eTec space at a rent of $16.50 per square foot for as long as it fits their operation.
The ideal tenant will prosper in the eTec until the business needs room elsewhere.
“Our idea is that we are going to grow you out of space and you will have to leave because you don’t have enough space here to accommodate your company,” Wood said. “That is pretty much what happens to most of the tenants.”
Wood and the NEDC staff of six monitor the progress of eTec clients and serve as a conduit to commercialization experts and services such as i2E that can provide assistance. The Moore-Norman Career Tech Center also provides a staff member who works with tenants with specific hiring and training needs.
“We don’t limit our services just to people who are in the incubator,” Wood said. “We provide services to anyone in the community.”
Some of the more successful eTec alumni include Weather Decision Technologies, Atmospheric Technology Services, both of which are now located on OU’s South Research Campus. Southwest Nanotechnologies is another alumnus, which is manufacturing single wall nanotubes from a new building that the Norman Economic Development Coalition helped finance.
“We try not to lose contact and we try to be supportive of our clients after they’ve left,” Wood said. “We try real hard to network them to other resources that are available. Key to that group would be OCAST and i2E and the Technology Business Finance Program.”
The bottom line to the eTec’s presence: It claims 32 incubator graduates that have created 324 jobs for the community.
Now that’s very Norman.
