Rohrer College of Business Incubator

Although the Rohrer College of Business Incubator is the newest and the smallest in the New Jersey Business Incubator Network, this precocious incubator has already established a solid reputation and ambitious vision for the future. Within two years of opening in 2008, the incubator graduated a company that is now a leading social media ad network, and it is beginning to build its vision for establishing the incubator as a hub of medical entrepreneurship.

The key to the incubator’s ability to quickly produce an extremely successful graduate may be due in part to its affiliation with Rowan University and The Rohrer College of Business. The incubator has been able to tap into a cycle of innovation that starts with undergraduate students and will ultimately be manifest in a planned Tech Park, the first building of which houses the incubator.

Two of the companies that either are or have been located at the incubator were founded by Rowan alum, and another founder is a Rowan professor. The three other companies have no previous affiliation with Rowan University.

“We’re hoping to get even more student and faculty-based companies to come into our program,” said Sarah Piddington, interim director of the incubator. “The overall idea for this building is to have academic labs that will spin out university-patented technology into the incubator. Once the new businesses become viable, they would then relocate in typical commercial space in one of the planned buildings in the university-affiliated Tech Park.”

Piddington is well-positioned to help make this cycle of innovation a reality: she also leads a program in project-based learning for undergraduate and graduate students for the business school’s Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The students do market research, business planning, audits, and other basic types of services that businesses—especially startup businesses—need. Some of these students are MBA candidates whose classes meet in the same building where the incubator is located.

Piddington hopes that the students in the project-based learning program and other student-based programs she coordinates will increasingly found businesses and move into the incubator. “We do get some technology ideas coming out of our student business plan competition. If they’re feasible and fit our mission, we encourage the students to come into our incubator program,” she said.

Social Reach, the hugely successful social networking ad company, is an example of the successful integration of the university’s academic programs and the incubator. Social Reach was founded by an alumnus of the entrepreneurship program. “The Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship did some focus groups for him for a new business venture idea that he was developing while he was a student,” said Piddington. “That was a neat example where we were able to see the evolution of the company from the beginning phase through to being a successful company.”

Piddington’s vision of expansion hinges on Rowan University’s plans to build additional buildings on the tract of land where the incubator is located. The complex will hopefully include additional space for the incubator and a Tech Park where graduates of the incubator and other companies will be able to rent commercial space.

The vision for the future of the program is that the incubator will become a center of medical entrepreneurship for New Jersey. The university just broke ground on a building that will house the medical school’s paramedical program. “It will be three to four years until the medical school is actualized, but the university is already getting revved up, hiring new people—including the new dean of the medical school—who are very interested in medical entrepreneurship,” said Piddington.

Piddington has intimate knowledge of the incubator because it was her own MBA project to write the proposal for its formation. When she graduated, the Rohrer College of Business hired her as a project manager. When the incubator director left in 2008, she took over in her current position as interim director.

“It’s been a learning experience,” said Piddington. “I knew about the National Business Incubation Association and quickly got involved with the New Jersey Business Incubation Network. The NJBIN members provided direction and guidance. A lot of them took the time to meet with me and I also visited a lot of the other incubators in the network.”

For the near future, the incubator is recruiting companies that have potentially patentable technology and a high potential for growth. The incubator is also launching a new program that will enable companies to participate in incubator services without being physically located at the incubator.

The National Business Incubation Association (NBIA) is the world’s leading organization advancing business incubation and entrepreneurship. Each year, it provides thousands of professionals with information, education, advocacy and networking resources to bring excellence to the process of assisting early-stage companies. An elected, voting board of directors representing the world's leading incubators governs the association.

The New Jersey Business Incubation Network (NJBIN) is a collaborative state-wide community of business experts, resources and facilities dedicated to enhancing the commercial success of early-stage entrepreneurial companies, growing higher paying jobs in New Jersey and supporting the Economic Growth Strategy for the State.