Mike Jaycock is passionate about the small business startup program he is hatching in the heart of Ontario’s cottage country.
As director of the Haliburton Creative Business Incubator, Mr. Jaycock is attracting would-be entrepreneurs to Halliburton County, about 230 kilometres north of Toronto. The program is due to start in June with four new companies ultimately pumping much needed creative energy – and jobs – into the region.
Business incubators provide full support to entrepreneurial startups, with resources and services adapted to that business’s needs. The aid flows for a specified period of time, usually two or three years, and mentors offer help in such areas as accounting or marketing. The incubator programs concentrate on businesses suitable to the region, such as information technology, agriculture or renewable energy.
Only a small number of businesses are selected and mentored at any one time, with new applicants taken on after the others “graduate” with stable, viable operations that no longer need help. Participants pay a nominal fee while they take part, and are housed together at a single location.
The result is best shown in the survival rates. According the Industry Canada, about 50 per cent of all new small businesses fail within five years of starting. Business incubation proponents say the success rate for their graduates is about 90 per cent.
Business incubators can be vital to rural communities, Mr. Jaycock says.
“This program is drawing in new business and new people to our region,” he says. “We’ve tried very hard to get our message into southern Ontario, to people outside of Haliburton County. … Part of the appeal is to say we’re here to give you a unique program and a unique lifestyle.
“I think we’re onto something for Haliburton, and I think we’re onto something for small communities literally anywhere in Canada.”
Board members of the Haliburton project decided to concentrate on creative businesses, says Mr. Jaycock. They have received applications from more than a dozen entrepreneurs who broadly define what it means to be creative. “I’ve had contact with artists, craftspeople, a lady who wants to run an [English as a Second Language] school, a designer, someone who’s in leatherwork. There’s also an executive from Toronto who is thinking of starting a second career in semi-retirement in fine furniture refurbishing and refinishing.”
Out of the four to be selected, Mr. Jaycock hopes three will come from outside the region. The startups will have a choice in occupying spaces of 190 square feet for $182 a month, 425 square feet for $319 or $263. For this they get the mentoring program plus use of the space, a copier/fax, audio-visual equipment and wireless Internet connection. Training seminars put on by the development corporation are free.
The cost of the first year of operation, Mr. Jaycock says, will be about $50,000, paid by local, provincial and federal funding.
Business incubators can be found in large urban centres, too, he says, but a recent tour of a Toronto incubator taught him something about what is valuable about his region.
“It’s big. It’s got in excess of 35 businesses,” he says. “I came back to our committee and said there were about 25 businesses in there that could be here in Halliburton. And if any of those people were interested in a place to establish a different lifestyle, we’re the sort of place they’d be able to look to.”
Other rural incubators across Canada echo Halliburton’s experiences.
In Middleton, N.S., Jeff Wentzell, business manager of the Ingeonuity business incubation program, has been overseeing the second year of its operation, which was brought together through the town’s link with Nova Scotia Community College and its centre for geographic sciences.
Three clients have set up in the Ingeonuity incubator: a geomatics software development company that gathers, stores and processes geographic information; a computer company that creates virtualizations in computer servers as a service; and a mapping company that is moving toward applications for geographical information systems.
Doors have been open for a year and a half, and Mr. Wentzell is looking for his next round of clients.
“Our current clients are seeing success. They’ve been able to grow since being in the incubator, both in creating jobs and increased revenue,” he said.
“We see a lot of our college grads go off to jobs across North America and take advantage of their training, but we see the opportunity for potential entrepreneurs to start up their businesses, engage those students as potential hirings here . We also want to find entrepreneurs at the college as well. We’re a small, rural community and there are people who want that lifestyle.”
In British Columbia, Peter Haubrich, a former research and development director for Sony in Germany, runs the Okanagan Research & Innovation Centre, which oversees three business incubators. One is in the urban setting of Kelowna, with nine businesses. Two are in smaller locations – a new centre in Penticton, with two businesses planned, and another at the National Research Council radio observatory, near Okanagan Falls, which has one company.
He says that for every dollar spent on business incubators, $30 is returned to the local economy in wages, taxes, sales and services.
“We are trying to make the south Okanagan the Mecca for clean technologies, because of our 2,000 hours of sunshine per year, because of our wind and our water. We think we have interesting potential here,” Mr. Haubrich said.
“For smaller communities, business incubators are a very good instrument for economic development and the diversification of the economy. We are still relatively new, with one company graduating, but it is growing very well, I believe.”
Special to The Globe and Mail
