The University’s Louisiana Business and Technology Center is competing for a $100,000 grant from Harvard University.
The Innovations in American Government Award, administered by Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, is awarded annually to programs featuring “creative and effective government.” LBTC was invited to apply after Harvard administrators heard about the center’s mobile classroom project.
LBTC, part of the E. J. Ourso College of Business, operates a business incubator. Founded in 1988, the incubator rents space to small Louisiana businesses. These business are then allowed to access University resources, like professional advisers and University students.
“Our purpose and our mission is to be LSU’s economic development arm,” said Charles D’Agostino, LBTC executive director. “Whereas other parts of LSU have an academic or a research mission, we are the outreach mission.”
D’Agostino said the incubator supplies businesses with more than students and counselors. He said the incubator gives small businesses a professional edge and provides critical networking opportunities.
Most of the businesses currently within the incubator are technology-oriented. The two newest tenants, DB Sysgraph Inc. and Resurgent Entertainment LLC, both focus on computer software and services. Another software development firm, General Informatics, is an official Microsoft partner.
LBTC’s mobile classroom is a custom-designed 18-wheeler with seminar seating and wireless Internet access. The mobile classroom provides advice to small businesses throughout Louisiana, and D’Agostino said it visits about 20 rural communities per year.
LBTC works with other entities, both on- and off-campus. For example, LBTC provides business advisers to the University’s Louisiana Emerging Technologies Center, which helps developing businesses in biotechnology, agriculture and environmental ventures. LBTC also has a technology transfer program set up with the NASA Stennis Space Center in southwest Mississippi.
Despite the attention from Harvard, LBTC is no stranger to awards. LBTC won many awards in the past few years, including the Randall Whaley National Incubator of the Year in North America award – given to the top incubator of more than 1,000 on the continent.
Located on the University’s South Campus, the incubator recently regained office space. When hurricanes Katrina and Rita forced the University’s School of Dentistry to evacuate its New Orleans office, LBTC offered one of its buildings to house a dentistry teaching clinic. Now that the School of Dentistry is moving back to New Orleans, LBTC is returning to its second building.
Currently housing about 20 companies, this space will make room for the incubator to hold about eight more.
“We’re just doing what we’ve been doing for the last 19 years,” D’Agostino said. “We’re just carrying on business, which is trying to create companies, which will create jobs.”
—-Contact Daniel McBride at [email protected]