The North Country Center for Businesses in Transition is offering a series of monthly workshops to meet the needs of local entrepreneurs as they plan for the future.

The organization has scheduled these workshops because “busy schedules and long hours make it difficult for many [North Country] business owners to find time for succession planning,” per a March 21 news release. 

It conducted the first workshop in Ticonderoga on April 3 with additional workshops planned in the months ahead in locations such as Saranac Lake, Potsdam, and Lowville.

The center is offering different ways to participate in the workshops, including in-person attendance and online viewing parties with partner organizations. Workshops will also be recorded so that interested participants can view them at their convenience and as needed in the future.

The St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce will hold its event on July 10 at Anchorspace in Potsdam. It’s called “Intergenerational Family Transitions, Creative Solutions and Alternative Structures.”

The following month, the Lewis County Economic Development and Industrial Development Agency (IDA) will hold its event Aug. 21 at its Center for Business in Lowville. That event is called, “Entrepreneurs: Taking Over an Existing Business.”

Other earlier events include Preparing to Sell Your Business,” hosted by the Franklin County Local Development Corporation and County of Franklin IDA at the Hotel Saranac in Saranac Lake on May 8. Hamilton County IDA will host “Transitioning to Worker Ownership” on June 5 at the Adirondack Experience museum in Blue Mountain Lake.

Each workshop will include invited panelists who will share their experiences with selling a business, taking over an existing enterprise or supporting small businesses through ownership changes. 

The Center for Businesses in Transition, a partnership led by the Adirondack North Country Association (ANCA), is “invested in the retention” of businesses in North Country communities. The center’s partner organizations and community liaisons provide resources and networking opportunities for business owners looking to transition their operations to new owners or ownership models.

“Succession planning is a critical step for the survival of independent businesses and the resilience of local economies. These workshops are designed to meet business owners where they are in ways that work best for them,” Danielle Delaini, coordinator of the ANCA business-transition program, said in the ANCA release. “The workshops will share real-life experiences as well as current research and professional expertise.”

North Country business owners and entrepreneurs can contact the center at ANCA’s office at transitions@adirondack.org or (518) 891-6200 for more information or to be connected with a community liaison. Information about the center’s workshop series and how to register can be found at www.adirondack.org/CBITWorkshopSeries.

Partnership involvement

The Center for Businesses in Transition partnership involves several organizations. They include the Adirondack North Country Association; Cornell Cooperative Extension; the Franklin County Local Development Corporation, in partnership with the County of Franklin Industrial Development Agency; Hamilton County Department of Economic Development and Tourism and the Hamilton County Industrial Development Agency (HCIDA); Lewis County Economic Development and IDA; St. Lawrence County Chamber of Commerce, Inc.; the Ticonderoga Area Chamber of Commerce; and New York State Small Business Development Center.                    

DICKINSON — The Broome Talent Task Force has released its first progress report on efforts to address workforce-development and “talent-attraction” needs in Broome County. 

The report highlights the objectives established in Broome County’s plan to attract workers that covers a three-year time span through 2020, the Agency said in a March 29 news release.

The Broome Talent Task Force is a group of representatives from industry, education, economic development, and nonprofit organizations. 

The group has about 33 members, Stacey Duncan, deputy director of community & economic development at the Agency, said in an email response to a CNYBJ inquiry.  Duncan is set to become the Agency’s new executive director this summer.

The Broome Talent Task Force meets quarterly. Specific work groups — such as those focused on topics that include health care and manufacturing — typically meet monthly.

The Agency describes itself as the lead economic-development organization in Broome County. It is the entity that governs the Broome County Industrial Development Agency and the Broome County Local Development Corporation.

The progress report outlines the process that the group used to develop a workforce strategy, along with what the group calls “successes” from the first year of implementing the plan. 

Over the last year, the Broome Talent Task Force has engaged 104 companies through direct participation on the task force and its workgroups, as well as businesses that participated in seven “Your Future Pathways to Success” career-exploration events, according to the progress report.

The task force will release future progress reports annually, per Duncan’s email response. 

Some of this report’s highlights include the launch of a “there are jobs” campaign as part of the Broome County Good Life program; the creation of a state-recognized Warehouse Opportunity Impact Program; and the launch of the Your Futures website by the Greater Binghamton Education Outreach Program (GBEOP) to link students, parents, educators, and industry to job and internship opportunities. 

The report also outlines the goals and objectives for this year’s efforts, which include pursuing funding for programs through funding that the state allocated for workforce development. 

The Agency, which began this effort with a data analysis of Broome’s work force, contends that the group has become a “powerful voice” in the region’s workforce development. 

“This group has been amazing to work with,” Duncan said in the Agency’s news release. “We’ve been able to pull together a group of professionals with tremendous knowledge and expertise in their fields and as a result, we are turning our strategy into a product with tangible outcomes.” 

Peter Newman, regional president of M&T Bank and Anthony Paniccia, president of Delta Engineers, Architects & Land Surveyors, have served as the group’s co-chairs since 2017. 

Those interested can download the report at the Agency’s website: https://www.theagency-ny.com/economic-development-resources

ITHACA — Cornell University’s Praxis Center for Venture Development seeks to help its clients develop engineering, digital, and physical-sciences companies and “accelerate” research and development of their technologies and products.

The Praxis Center wants to help entrepreneurs in their efforts to secure “significant” outside investment and to reach “self-sufficiency,” all while supporting business development in New York, Cornell said in a news release.

“The idea is to allow [entrepreneurs] to mature their technology far enough to get some funding. No one expects that fully functional companies will exist in our incubator,” says Robert Scharf, director of the Praxis Center and an entrepreneur-in-residence at Cornell Engineering. 

Scharf is a retired executive with 12 patents, whose 2003 startup, Protokraft, was acquired by Moog Inc. in 2012 for $17.5 million, per the Cornell release.

The university hosted a March 21 grand opening and ribbon-cutting ceremony for the new facility. The word “praxis” is drawn from the Greek language; it implies action, or getting things done, Cornell said.

The 4,000-square-foot facility is meant to provide graduate students, post-doctoral students (post-docs), or Ph.D candidates a place to work on their product or idea while they’re still working at their Cornell job, according to Scharf.

But he also added that prospective clients don’t have to be a Cornell student or employee. 

“The only requirement is that you’d be commercializing Cornell technology. Our requirement is you must actually get a license agreement with the Cornell technology-licensing office, which implies that it is a Cornell technology,” says Scharf.

Prospective clients are already working on a range of projects, from crypto-currency and next-generation robotics to ultrasonic sensors with applications in the emerging field of digital agriculture. 

Location

Housed in Duffield Hall and funded by Cornell’s research division, the Praxis Center takes as a model Cornell’s Kevin McGovern Family Center for Venture Development in the Life Sciences in Weill Hall. The McGovern Center incubator, which opened in 2011, has helped “scores” of budding entrepreneurs take their ideas “from the back of a napkin to the marketplace.”

The Praxis Center has six office suites, a conference room, a kitchen, and a reception area. 

The center is located near three National Science Foundation (NSF)-supported research and development laboratories. They include the Cornell NanoScale Science and Technology Facility (CNF); the PARADIM (Platform for the Accelerated Realization, Analysis and Discovery of Interface Materials) labs, and portions of the Cornell Center for Materials Research.

“We can leverage our location to do a lot of things,” says Scharf.

Supporting Cornell startups

The “vast majority” of Praxis Center clients are post-docs who are working in a lab on a research project that they believe has “commercial opportunities,” Scharf tells CNYBJ in an April 12 interview.

Most of them apply for Small Business Innovation Research grants, although the Alexandria, Virginia–based NSF and the Bethesda, Maryland–based National Institute of Health also provide grant funding for the projects.

“Every federal agency allocates a certain percentage of their budget to funding entrepreneurial activities to develop new technologies. Our clients … work to mature or commercialize their technologies,” says Scharf.

At the same time, they’re creating their business case for further investments. 

The Praxis Center has mentors and advisors with field-specific expertise “in many different disciplines.” The facility also provides patent attorneys, accounting experts, and retired CFOs “to try to help these clients move along their entrepreneurial journey toward self-sufficiency,” he adds.

“There is a strong entrepreneurial spirit at Cornell, especially among our students and young faculty. Resources like the Praxis and the McGovern Center encourage and support a startup mentality with enormous potential for growth,” Emmanuel Giannelis, vice provost for research and VP for technology transfer, intellectual property, and research policy at Cornell University, said in the school’s release. “At Cornell, we are committed to fostering entrepreneurship by translating knowledge into real world applications.”

In supporting Cornell startups, the Praxis Center contributes to the university’s land-grant mission by supporting local, regional and state economic development and job creation in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) fields. The center will entice more venture capital to the region so that entrepreneurs won’t have to go to larger cities in order to grow, Giannelis contended.

“The Praxis Center is not just a space; it’s not just the infrastructure,” Giannelis said. “There’s also the human element, with mentorship from experienced entrepreneurs that form an integral part to helping young businesses become successful.”