New Technology and Renewable Energy Incubator Launches in Southern Utah

Posted by Josh Ewing in Featured Articles, Utah's green economy on Jan 12th, 2010 | 41 responses

Utah’s first business incubator focused on renewable energy opened its doors today at University Plaza, near the campus of Dixie State College in St. George. A collaborative effort spearheaded by USTAR, the Southern Utah Information Technology and Renewable Energy Incubator (ITRE) helps Utah join several other states and cities investing in the start-up of new businesses focused on green technology and alternative energy.

Technology and green energy incubators have proven to be successful in other “rural” areas around the nation. In fact, recent research suggests that businesses involved in an incubator are successful 87% of the time, compared to the less than 60% success rate for non-incubated companies.

The concept for the incubator was first explored as part of a SEED Dixie planning process in 2005, but the idea was something of a pipedream at the time.

“We thought it would be a long time coming due to the expensive office space market in Southern Utah,” said Jill Elliss, the ITRE Director. “Because of the change in the real estate market, we’ve been able to launch this center much earlier than expected.”

“We’ve seen in the last year the perils of our local economy being too focused on the real estate and construction industries,” continued Elliss. “This incubator is part of our effort to diversity the economic base and create quality, new jobs.”

Enjoying the new Office: True Scale Technologies' CTO Matt Excell, right and Software Engineer Zac Beatty

The incubator’s first tenant is an information technology company called Truescale Technologies, a cloud computing start-up with 4 pending patents. The company started with two employees and is already adding three more.

Elliss reports significant interest from a handful of renewable energy start-ups, with the most promising being a potential methane gas recovery company.

The center intends to be quite selective in choosing its tenants, requiring that companies agree to an aggressive mentoring program, which includes regular progress updates.

“For the most part, these will be companies with promising technologies and business plans that are just at the state of leaving the garage for a more professional setting,” said Elliss. “But they’ll already be hiring employees and be excited to participate in the incubation process.”

Tenants will rent space at approximately market rates, but get many free perks:

Business mentoring from successful business executives
Use of conference rooms and classrooms.
Free high-speed internet courtesy of InfoWest.

Elliss already has plans for creating a satellite incubator of ITRE at Southern Utah Univeristy’s Business Reource Center in Cedar City, near Utah’s clean energy headquarters in Milford (home to Utah’s largest windfarm and a geothermal plant). But for now, she’s focused on making the ITRE’s first location a success.

“This incubator is just in its infancy,” said Elliss. “But we have great tools to get it if off the ground and help grow Southern Utah’s technology and green economic sectors.”

The ITRE is a collaborative effort of USTAR, the Dixie Business Alliance, the Small Business Development Center, Seed Dixie, Dixie State College, and Dixie Applied Technology College.