Keep politicians off incubator board, official says in Salem

Beginning businesses need guidance and direction.

By D.A. WILKINSON

VINDICATOR SALEM BUREAU

SALEM — An economic development official told Salem businessmen that politicians and officials should be kept off an incubator’s board of directors.

Instead, incubators should be run by interested businessmen who can and want to provide help.

David Cattey, the retired executive director of the Business Technology Center in Columbus, gave that advice Friday at the Salem Community Center as part of the Salem Area Enterprise Development Forum.

Cattey won the top award from the National Business Incubation Association in 2003.

David Nestic of SAEDF said he set up the meeting after city council had discussed business incubators.

Nestic is running as an independent for the 1st Ward council seat in Salem.

Cattey said there are about 1,000 business incubators in the United States, and three times that number in the rest of the world.

There’s an economic development drive going on around the globe, he said.

Incubators provide a variety of assistance to help companies get off the ground. Most of the companies in incubators have less than 10 workers, Cattey said.

Incubators must use the best business practices to nuture developing companies and help them with tactical and strategic services.

That means people who want to work with incubators should do so, not politicians and government officials.

Businesses in incubators often get financial assistance or incentives from governments. Cattey said incubators are then “viewed as a social service agency.”

Cattey said he learned the hard way. When he got started in the 1990s with the Columbus facility, “it was the blind leading the blind.”

He said he was tied up in trying to maintain the building. Instead, he got out of the building and maintenance business and into a facility where others took care of the property.

“I was able to focus on growing our business,” he said

Companies in incubators also need ongoing evaluations to make sure they are moving in the right direction, he added.

wilkinson@vindy.com