Innovators get a boost in the Commercialization Center
These days when representatives from large multinational companies and organizations step off an airplane at Raleigh-Durham Airport, they may not be heading west to the Research Triangle Park. Instead, they may drive to Wake Forest and an unassuming office building off Rogers Road.
The same is true for officials of eastern Carolina counties and town, for people with an idea that needs assistance to become real and for officials from the state Department of Commerce, Duke, UNC, UNC-G and UNC-W, NC State and East Carolina.
They are all going to the Wireless Research Center of North Carolina headed by Dr. Gerard Hayes, the founder and president, and General Manager Larry Steffan, who are backed by a staff of nine experts in wireless technology. Very soon another engineer will join the staff.
Also in the four connected suites are at least five entrepreneurs and visionaries working on their own products and using the center’s facilities and resources to make their products commercially viable. Along the way Hayes and Steffan help them refine their business plans.
There is Bright Wolf software, which makes businesses smarter and more efficient by connecting wireless technologies to enterprise systems.
Ann Revell-Pechar opened a second radio studio in the center for her Business RadioX NC, a studio where she conducts live interviews which are also podcasts about the center and related topics. Her next broadcast will feature two start-ups, Prsonas and Physcient.
Prsonas has created virtual presenters for use at job fairs or industry shows where people now recite the company’s or the product’s virtues several times a day. The virtual presenter is a person or even a cardboard cutout of a person in a video. If you want to hear the presentation, just look the virtual person in the eye and the presentation will begin.
Physcient plans to make computer-based blunt surgical instruments that can be used for certain parts of an operation where a surgical knife may not be suitable.
You can find the broadcasts to listen live or to a podcast at www.Raleigh.businessradioX.com or www.carolinaconnections.businessradioX.com. The live shows air at 1 p.m. every Monday.
FokusLabs is a start-up with a bright future, the brainchild of Rich Brancaccio, a school psychologist with Wake County Public Schools.
He has developed a wristband which uses software and a wireless connection to remind the wearers with a phrase and vibration to get back on task. Brancaccio says it can be used by any child or adult but it has “features to help support those with special needs such as the autism spectrum or ADHD.”
The patent for the device is pending and Brancaccio is now planning the production. He added that he wants to keep the price affordable. “I don’t want to price it out of reach for anyone.”
Brancaccio, who won an NC IDEA Grant for the concept, moved the wireless center late last year. “Gerry and Larry are great,” he said. “It’s a really great environment” with the other start-ups, some of whom have faced similar problems. “You also have access to business advice and business plans and the camaraderie. You get a lot of great advice.”
The wireless center is attracting so many businesses and people because it operates on trust – as a nonprofit it does not ask for a share of the intellectual property of the businesses who use it – and, as Steffan says, “We’re coin-operated. Ka-ching,” pumping his arm.
They charge for their services, but with significant discounts for universities, research and nonprofit institutions. And they have equipment that is vital to their global customers, such as the Satimo SG64 anehoic chamber, only one of two commercially available in the world. It was purchased with a $962,000 grant from the Golden LEAF Foundation in late 2011.
A second Golden LEAF grant of $750,000 in late 2013 is being used to set up a portable system to test, evaluate and implement a wireless network in the eastern part of the state or the mountains before a costly permanent internet system is installed. As someone said recently, “Today, if you do not have access to high-speed broadband you are poor and will remain poor.”
Steffan said the officials in the eastern counties and towns trust Hayes and the center’s staff to give them good, disinterested advice about their internet development. The multinational companies and the Fortune 100 companies, the entrepreneurs and the research institutions trust the center because it does not seek a share in their intellectual property plus it has the staff, the equipment and the background to provide the range of services they need.
The Town of Wake Forest has supported the wireless center in its formative years using its Futures Fund. There was an initial grant of $308,312 and that was followed by a $948,950 loan. The center is beginning to pay back the loan.
It is a Wake Forest-centered group with many of its employees, including Hayes and Steffan, living in town, and they are steady supporters of the town’s restaurants for lunch.
They work closely with Wake Forest Chamber of Commerce President Marla Akridge, who was recently disappointed, as were Hayes and Steffan, not to be able to find suitable space in town for a company which wants to be close to the center. It has since moved to Durham.
