Network Would Nurture High-Tech Start-Ups

Orange County’s business gurus are pushing hard to establish a network of technology innovation centers to nurture new businesses the way the county’s agricultural forebears nurtured their crops.

The Orange County Business Council is leading the effort. The group has about $200,000 in federal funding from a defense conversion program grant to set up a business incubation center. Tim Cooley, head of strategic initiatives for the Irvine-based business council, says several other entities also are talking of starting technology incubators.

In Anaheim, recently wired with a state-of-the-art fiber-optic system, city officials are talking about starting an incubator to encourage businesses in the telecommunications arena. UC Irvine officials, already neck-deep in biomedical business development efforts, are planning to free up space in a campus semiconductor fabrication lab for use by nascent businesses in that field. The Beckman Laser Institute is using proceeds of a $1-million grant to establish a public-private effort in developing medical optic devices such as lasers and scanners.

The business council would use its planned facility as “a central center for integrated testing, engineering and prototype development, one that all the other centers could make use of,” Cooley said.

The center could be functional by the third quarter next year. It would serve as a sort of newborn care unit for businesses developing medical devices, electronics, multimedia computer systems and software and possibly biomedical products.

In researching business incubators, the business council’s strategic initiatives division found that those stressing high-tech businesses do very well, Cooley said. “Businesses that are launched from technology incubators have an 80% survival rate, compared with about 20% for the population at large,” he said.