Denver-based Innovation Pavilion eyes Bradenton for potential expansion
BRADENTON -- Spark Growth founders Stan Schultes and Sara Hand, who operate Bradenton's Station 2 Innovation Center, have been busy spreading the word of the community's limitless business expansion opportunities and one of the nation's premier innovation centers has heard the message.
The 3.0 Leaders Conference hosted by Spark Growth will be held Thursday and Friday at the Manatee Performing Arts Center at 502 Third Ave. W. Denver-area Innovation Pavilion co-founder and chairman Vic Ahmed is among the guest speakers on 21st Century Economic Development. IP builds and develops innovation and business incubator hubs unlike anything in the area. The facility's investment alone is upward of $30 million and the long-term investments into the community can total more than $100 million.
Ahmed is a self-described serial entrepreneur, who specializes in high-growth, high-tech businesses. Ahmed is also the CEO of Business Genetics and also serves on the Colorado governor's Innovation Commission. He is secretary of technology of Colorado's IT Commission, a nonprofit focused on the sustainable development in under-served communities.
"Innovation Pavilion has created an innovation center that is a much more large-scale version of what we do here," said Schultes. "They are really good at what they do and have been doing it for a long time."
IP targets a community, spends up to a year doing research on the area of development for which a community is ripe, and then makes it happen. In Colorado, the state wasn't even on the map for digital health care in 2012. Three years after IP took the reins, the state was ranked sixth in the nation in that field. Schultes and Hand toured IP's multi-million dollar facility in Denver and knew immediately they shared a common vision with Ahmed.
"Vic's really on top of things and
very motivated to make a difference in the world," said Schultes. "He is looking to expand into 20 cities and he wants to be in the Bradentons of the world, not the bigger cities. What we've been doing the last eight months is having dialogue with Denver and understanding what they do and how they do it and what their expectations might be for the local region. They focus on the live, work and play model, just like we are doing in Manatee County. There are so many things that make it right for Bradenton right now."
Should IP choose Bradenton for expansion, it would spend up to a year deciphering the community needs, potential and talent pool, as it did with the digital health industry in Colorado. IP develops a business model and invests millions into creating that business environment through private investments. But it also continues a focus on it base model of helping small businesses develop.
Schultes thinks Bradenton is ripe for advanced manufacturing that involves early manufacturing designs. Station 2 is working on a scholarship and intern program for advanced manufacturing.
Hand said the education is already taking place within the Manatee County School District, where the county excels with its science, technology and math program, or STEM.
"The challenge in Manatee County is we get so bogged down in what we do wrong," said Hand. "We have an existing curriculum that is working. Just the STEM piece alone with the assets we have due to local education is huge."
Schultes said the STEM program and its success is one of Manatee County's best hidden secrets.
"So if Innovation Pavilion builds out a STEM program, we already have an existing successful program that needs to be scaled out at our schools and this is how they do the community solutions," he said.
IP would have the ability to bring large corporations into their corporate suites at a potential Bradenton facility for Fortune 500 companies. Those companies could use the business incubator environment for product development like Gatorade does at IMG, but at a much larger scale, or set up a base to seek out local expansion opportunities.
"This is how it begins," said Schultes. "We bring someone in who understands how to do it well with connections around the world and with major corporations."
For information on the 3.0 leadership conference, visit SparkGrowth.net.
Mark Young, Herald urban affairs reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7041 or follow him on Twitter @urbanmark2014.
This story was originally published February 14, 2016 at 11:03 PM with the headline "Denver-based Innovation Pavilion eyes Bradenton for potential expansion ."