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Opened in 2003 at the Research Park on the southwest corner of the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus, EnterpriseWorks is the tech startup incubator that has become the focus at the state's flagship university.
The Research Park at U of I occupies 200 acres, employs 1,400 people and has 90 companies, including a noteworthy list of corporate tenants: Yahoo, Caterpillar, State Farm, ADM, Sony, Raytheon, Citrix, Abbott, Dow Chemical and John Deere.
“Our core is that we are scientific-based startup companies,” Research Park Director Laura Frerichs said. “These are mostly companies founded by a professor at the University, or a grad student starting a company out of the University.”
The 42 startups located at EnterpriseWorks include biotech, chemistry, materials science and software firms, but "the one linking thing is that it is almost all of them commercialize technology out of the University of Illinois," Frerichs said.
Even though the university is two hours south of Chicago, Frerichs said she works to emphasize the importance of the innovation and the startup ecosystem in the city and in the whole region.
“There's an opportunity to see this as a collective benefit we have is a region,” she said. "That is more appealing than just one particular activity that may be happening in Chicago, but more of an explanation of why Illinois is relevant, why the Midwest is relevant.”
“Many of our companies, naturally came to the conclusion that if it wasn't going to be done here, it would go to Silicon Valley, or to Boston, or to the Research Triangle (North Carolina), or to Austin, Texas," Frerichs said. "And one of the things that we're trying to do is better connect the companies here with Chicago."
In her view, connecting the big city with the downstate research institution will strongly benefit the statewide tech community.
“If you look at other communities across the country, places like Boulder have an influence on what's happening in Denver," said Frerichs. “And also that Silicon Valley was originally out in a rural area but has certainly colored the entire San Francisco region over time.”
“I'm not saying that we are Mountain View,” she said. “But I will say that the proximity (to Champaign) isn't as far as people think it is. We have a (tech) ecosystem that is developed, that is highly intellectual, highly technology-focused, and the connectedness of that then to a major metropolitan market is a compelling opportunity to become commercially relevant.
Frerichs sees a sign of that connectedness right here in Chicago. “When you walk the center hallway of 1871 and you see the University of Chicago, IIT (Illinois Institute of Technology) and the University of Illinois, it is all our collective story that has to be successful to create the relevance of why Illinois matters.”
“I think that sense of pride of things that are happening matters, that we collectively feel a part of something together,” Frerichs said. “I think that is starting to happen in the Chicago community.”
She argued that if “we start talking about broadly what's happening in the region and why it's relevant,” then venture capitalists will realize that “you're missing something if you're not taking a stop to explore this area of the country.”
Illinois, by the way, has a substantial list of Fortune 500 corporations, which is an essential part of the startup picture in Frerich's view.
“As a state,” she said “we have a wealth of corporations. And that is of key importance for competitiveness and applications for our startups.” We can “look at the trends in our corporations and what they're seeking, look at how can we better connect corporations and startup activity to create something that's bigger than the sum of its parts.”
With one of the largest lists of Fortune 500 companies of any state in the US, added Frerichs, “using that is an important leverage point for commercialization.”
