Thursday the city of East Lansing celebrated being named one of the top ten college towns to start a business in Entrepreneur magazine. They also celebrated the one-year anniversary of the opening of the Technology Innovative Center. Ted Staton and two MSU students discuss how college students can play a role as entrepreneurs in East Lansing.
About 200 East Lansing residents and business owners gathered Thursday to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the opening of city’s Technology Innovation Center, or TIC.
The center’s goal is to give emerging businesses a place to house their business, and to provide them with tools and networking to increase their success. TIC, 325 E. Grand River Ave., currently houses 14 companies and 45 employees.
The city’s goal is to build each business to a point where they will be able to move outside of TIC, City Manager Ted Staton said.
“What’s more important to us is to see them stay in the region … we just want to create a platform for business to get a foothold and expand here, so there’s opportunities for MSU students,” Staton said.
One company, Enliven Software, currently is preparing to graduate from TIC.
“We’re celebrating the graduation of Enliven Software as they expand and move into other business space in the downtown East Lansing area,” Jason Meyers, editor at large of Entrepreneur Magazine, said at the event. “We’re celebrating the entrepreneurial spirit and all of the business that are developing and thriving at this time.”
The key to TIC is synergy between different companies, helping each other to network and grow, said Jeff Smith, the project manager for the city of East Lansing. Media arts and technology and communication seniors Mike Goodwin and Jake Barnett have a business at TIC that they said has benefited from the synergy.
“(Other businesses) have helped a lot with social media … and how to best manage our business through there,” Barnett said. “It’s been really interesting, that definitely helped us out.”
Staton said he was pleased by the number of businesses working with TIC during the current economic recession.
“You enter a venture like this, and you don’t know what to expect,” Staton said.
The city plans to open a restaurant incubator in the future, which will function much like the technology center, but for dining services, Smith said. Much like TIC where companies work in an environment marked by synergy, one building will house multiple restaurants.
“We’d have six or seven slots of entrepreneurs to try out their restaurant ideas … different cuisine that isn’t available in downtown,” Smith said.
The city also celebrated the fact that Entrepreneur Magazine listed East Lansing as one of the top 10 college towns to start a business in its October 2009 issue.
“Not only (is East Lansing) entrepreneurial,” said Amy Cosper, editor in chief of Entrepreneur Magazine. “(It is) the new economy..”
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