Welcome
Sustainable Venture Workshop at FDU on Friday, May 2:
“Growing the Next Generation of Green Ventures”
Sustainable Entrepreneurship Symposium and Expo
An NCIIA Invention to Venture Workshop
for faculty, students, and the business community
Friday, May 2, 2008, 8 a.m. - 4 p.m.
Followed by a networking reception 4 p.m. - 6 p.m.
and Green Enterprise Showcase
Fairleigh Dickinson University’s Silberman College of Business
College at Florham, 285 Madison Avenue, Madison, NJ
For the latest information on the program, and to register, please visit
http://invention2venture.org/greenventures08/
If you are interested in participating as a sponsor, speaker/facilitator, or exhibitor please contact Jonathan Cloud at 908-306-9075 or contact us through this site.
Here are the latest program flyers and sponsorship opportunities sheets:
May 2 Event Sponsorship Opportunities (PDF)
Welcome to FDU’s Laboratory for Sustainable Businesses
Welcome to FDU’s Sustainable Business Incubator and its affiliated Sustainable Resource Network.
| LATEST NEWS: The Incubator is hosting a venture conference, workshop, and expo for the next generation of sustainable technologies and businesses at FDU’s College at Florham on Friday, May 2, 2008. For full event details, click here. January 30, 2008: The Incubator officially launches, with a press event featuring its first client, HydroCoil Power, Inc. For details, click here. |
The Incubator, sponsored by the Institute for Sustainable Enterprise at Fairleigh Dickinson University, in partnership with a number of other organizations, provides assistance to startups with sustainable technologies and business models designed to address the climate and environmental crises we face in the world today.
The development of the Incubator is also seen as a case study for the collaborative, action-learning approach of the Institute. Portions of this site are intended to serve as a record of the Incubator’s evolution, and document our recognition of “best practices” in prior incubator development.
The eventual online home of the Incubator is intended to include a portal to a three-dimensional virtual work environment, with all of the services of a classical incubator except the physical office space component, along with a specific focus on supporting our client companies in maximizing the triple bottom line of people, profits, and planet.
We invite you to participate in this effort in a variety of ways, as described on the “Contact Us” page. If you are interested in using the Incubator’s services, please contact Jonathan Cloud at 908-306-9075 or jcloud@SustainableBusinessIncubator.com.Also check out the Latest News and our Incubator News, as well as our listing of upcoming events of interest, and let us know if there’s something you’d like to see included in these pages.Status Report on the Incubator (7/29/07)
The Incubator’s July 18 “stakeholder meeting” was a resounding success, with a wide spectrum of individuals from business, government, and academia coming together to offer ideas, suggestions, and support to the Incubator project. More details on this will follow, but the steering committee plans to move forward with a full feasibility study, with strategic partnerships with other incubators and nonprofits, and has reached an agreement to sign up its first full client, HydroCoil Power.
The next steps will include posting a full report on the July 18 session, and creating an online repository for the SBI’s “Resource Network” that will be available to clients and partners of the ISE. If you’d like to be part of this, please email us at jcloud@fdu.edu.
Status Report on the Incubator (7/4/07)
The ISE is sponsoring a planning session for the Incubator on Wednesday, July 18, 2007. We are inviting a spectrum of potential stakeholders, from business, government, and academia to help move us forward in this effort.
The meeting will be held in the Orangerie at the FDU Library on the FDU Madison Campus, and we will provide complimentary breakfast and lunch with a variety of information and discussion sessions to present our ideas and get feedback, suggestions, and indications of interest from key contacts and resources. Invited guests include representatives of venture firms, other New Jersey incubators, NJEDA, NJTC, and other organizations, as well as several experienced entrepreneurs, corporate executives, and business school faculty members.
For more information, please contact Jonathan Cloud at 908-306-9075 or jcloud@SustainableBusinessIncubator.com.
Status Report on the Incubator (5/4/07)
The Sustainable Business Incubator is an initiative of ISE, in partnership with the Center for Business Excellence, the National Association of Women Business Owners - North Central Jersey chapter, and other organizations. It is designed to provide assistance to startup companies involved in sustainable technologies and business ventures, and to commercialize sustainable aspects of ISE’s and FDU’s intellectual capital.
As presently conceived, the Incubator will operate in a virtual mode, offering most of the services provided by traditional business incubators other than lab or office space. Service offerings may include:
- Access to university/college resources including research collaboration opportunities, student interns, MBA student support teams, etc.
- Business planning & milestone tracking
- Product, marketing & manufacturing strategy support
- Prototyping, software, web development
- Strategic partnerships, licensing opportunities, and client development
- Legal advice on governance, IP, licensing, corporate law, deal structuring
- Finance and accounting support
- Government agency navigation & grant support
- Entrepreneurs in Residence
- Networking opportunities with angel investors, venture capitalists, and other emerging businesses
- Linking large corporations and Incubator participants around sustainable business practices
- Sponsorship of competitions for business plans, specifically focused on social, economic, and ecological sustainability
- Mentoring and learning opportunities from FDU-ISE with access to university/college resources, including collaborative research opportunities, student interns, MBA student support teams, etc.
- Seed Funds for milestone specific projects
Services are provided on a custom-tailored basis to ventures that qualify through (a) embracing the triple bottom line concept, and (b) providing a technology, product, or service that contributes to sustainability in business, government, or the consumer market.
The Incubator derives its revenues from grants, fee-for-service offerings, success fees for financing or customer acquisition, and equity participation. In addition, it offers an opportunity for the University to commercialize its intellectual property where this relates to sustainability. This gives the rest of the University community a stake in the Incubator project, and potentially gives the Incubator an opportunity to foster ventures that will make a difference, leveraging the University’s resources.
The Incubator will be managed by an Executive Committee, a Board of Directors, and an Advisory Board. The administration of the Incubator may be outsourced to the CBE or another organization. The Incubator will establish a service provider network, a sustainable business network, and a resource bank to assist early ventures and offer opportunities for participation by all interested stakeholders. Interested members of the Advisory Board will be amongst the first to be invited to participate. The Incubator will also establish collaborative relationships with other incubators, public agencies, academic institutions, and businesses in north-central New Jersey.
The Incubator has its first potential client, Hydrocoil Power, Inc., a company that has a patented technology for generating electricity from low-head or small-scale hydro. “Low-head” hydro is pretty much anything under 100 feet (conventional hydro uses falls of 200-300 feet), down to as low as six feet in fall height. Dams of this size are all over America - some 78,000 higher than 12 feet having been catalogued by FEMA and if they were all harnessed efficiently they could conceivably generate enough electricity to meet current requirements and allow us to significantly reduce our reliance on fossil fuels. The estimated cost of the electricity generated is perhaps a sixth of the cost of wind or photovoltaics. We can assist Hydrocoil with customer acquisition, funding, business planning, and a wide range of government and business contacts.
According to the National Business Incubation Association, start-up companies in incubators have a higher success rate than those developing without the critical business assistance provided by incubators:
- More than 65 percent of incubator-based early-stage companies are likely to receive third party financing, compared to less than 10 percent of early-stage companies not based in an incubator
- 87 percent of incubator graduate companies remain in business after three years, compared to just half of non-incubator start-ups
- And 84 percent of those incubator graduates remain local to their incubator
Both the ISE and the CBE were founded on the basis of a commitment to the triple bottom line - people, profits, planet - that is needed to measure genuine sustainability in a company. Both organizations will work hard to assist start-up ventures to maximize their contributions to each of these measures. The CBE, which is an independent nonprofit, can provide rapid-response management services to realize the potential of the Incubator. The ISE provides the overall philosophy, direction, and sponsorship for the Incubator, and brings the resources and credibility of Fairleigh Dickinson University to the endeavor.
There are several potential benefits to the University that accrue from the Incubator, from simply building a positive relationship with a number of successful start-up ventures, to potential equity participation, licensing arrangements, and improved business-school programs. There is some support in the State for additional business incubators, and there is currently no incubator associated with FDU or operating in the vicinity of the Madison campus. In addition, there are extensive educational, research, and technology-transfer opportunities associated with the Incubator.
In association with the National Association of Women Business Owners - North Central Jersey Chapter (NAWBO-NCJ), and its annual Women of Inspiration event, the Incubator is seeking sponsorships from a number of companies, organizations, and individuals. Several members of NAWBO-NCJ may also utilize the services of the Incubator to develop more sustainable practices and metrics for their industries.
Steering Committee: Gerard Farias, Jonathan Cloud, Matt Polsky, Jeana Wirtenberg, Bill Russell, and Joel Harmon.
For more information, please contact Jonathan at 908-306-9075 or jcloud@SustainableBusinessIncubator.com.