All,
As most of you know, Lisa and I officially opened The BioScience Center (TBSC) in January of 2013. At the time it was a novel concept. There were other incubators in the State, although none focused on the biosciences. I think we can say it’s been a success and that the biosciences have become an important economic driver for our community. Clearly the number and sophistication of the bioscience startups is at an all-time high. We haven’t gotten to the point yet of broad national recognition. But we’re moving in the right direction.
Startups are not only booming in the biosciences, they’re booming in New Mexico in all kinds of fields. We need to think about how we’re going to support startups going to the next stage.
Now could be the time for a next step, specifically to address where companies go once they’ve graduated from an incubator. In fields other than perhaps software development, and maybe even in software development, we should probably be planning something to support incubator graduates address the challenges of manufacturing and scale-up.
There is a group of people who are convinced that a “transition incubator” is needed in New Mexico to help entrepreneurs who are beyond traditional incubation but not yet ready to move into their own manufacturing facilities. The belief is that there are entrepreneurs who need to be able to scale up production from what they are able to do in a typical incubator or maker space, have access to shared manufacturing equipment and expansion space and be able to obtain technical assistance appropriate for a manufacturer (as opposed to a researcher.)
The folks who are evaluating the feasibility of this next step “manufacturing” incubator are looking for opinions from potential users of such a transition incubator. I’m sending you the survey they’ve put together in the hope that you will be interested in responding. The evaluators believe it’ll take less than 10 minutes to fill out. The survey can be completed online at http://tiny.cc/NM-TIME. Responses are due by June 30th.
Thank you in advance for your help with this.
Stuart A. Rose, Founder
The BioScience Center
stuart@thebiosciencecenter.com
o: +1-505-200-9501