An organization focused on boosting innovation across the I-4 corridor has secured a $50,000 grant to support rural businesses.
Orlando-based Florida High Tech Corridor won the grant from the Small Business Administration earlier this month, as part of SBA's 2023 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition.
The money will be used to “engage rural assets and stakeholders in Central Florida communities and conduct needs assessments for the region’s rural businesses,” the nonprofit said in a statement.
The Florida High Tech Corridor may be seen by some as Orlando-centric — and its offices are in Orlando at the Fashion Square Mall — but in fact, the group covers 23 counties in the center of the state, from the Gulf to the Atlantic. When Sohl references The Florida High Tech Corridor's unique position, it’s the team's view of and insights about a large swath of territory he’s talking about.
Sohl and his small team constantly move throughout their region growing relationships and observing developments – from a tech fair in Sarasota where they met a sixth grader developing a robot she hopes will remove plastic from the ocean to Plant City, where Sohl, whose parents grew up on farms, was fascinated by how farmers are incorporating robotics into their processes.
How the Florida High Tech Corridor uncovers rural assets
Engagement activity already has begun even though the award money hasn’t been disbursed yet.
“I like to make sure that the people that really know the business and make things happen are the ones connected to the rest of the system, the partners out there, the stakeholders," said Florida High Tech Corridor’s Cenfluence Program Director Steve Nakagawa. "And that's totally what the corridor does."
As part of that effort, the Florida High Tech Corridor team toured Catapult Lakeland Inc. in Polk County on May 25. Catapult is a co-working space and regarded by the Florida High Tech Corridor as the kind of stakeholder that reaches rural businesses.
While Catapult Associate Director Christiaan Abbott doesn’t consider Lakeland rural, he said it does have members from rural areas. He wasn’t sure how many of its 270 members are rural. “We don't categorize our members that way. We have ethnicity, gender and business type."
Still, Abbott said the visit from the Florida High Tech Corridor team went well. “They were fascinated by the fact that we had such a diverse group of members. And the fact that we are an incubator that has a workspace, a commercial kitchen and a state of the art maker space all under one roof is pretty different. … At lunch we discussed what kind of resources they have that we could leverage and what we can do at Catapult when people [from our area] reach out to the corridor for help.”
What are the benefits of the Cenfluence cluster program
Abbott said of the Florida High Tech Corridor programming he learned about, he is most drawn to the cluster program, Cenfluence, which is intended to help similar businesses learn from one another’s experiences and cut down on trial and error that can slow progress for a new business.
“[We’re interested in] the clusters they have so our members can meet other people in the same lines of business and learn from those who are maybe just a step or two ahead of them. This is exciting for us. We can grab one of our technology companies and say, ‘Hey, here's a company in Orlando that's kind of in the same area as you, you should hang out.’ ”
Florida High Tech Corridor CEO Paul Sohl spoke of Cenfluence as creating a structure to build on.
“[Because of] the Orange County grant that we get to run Cenfluence, we have processes in place now that we can follow that we can then utilize for the growth accelerator prize on the rural side of it," he said.
This will be helpful, he said, as the Florida High Tech Corridor grows: “One of the areas we saw as a gap was this idea of going after additional resources [beyond] the resources we get through the state and through the universities. Starting a year and a half ago … we tried our skills at this and started seeing we are in a unique position for this.”
Applications for the second stage of the 2023 Growth Accelerator Fund Competition are due July 28, with interviews conducted in August and winners announced in early September. Thomas said the first stage of the competition will have no impact on stage two judging. A significant emphasis for the second stage will be placed on ecosystem building and creating lasting partnerships that ensure organizations working with underserved communities have access to the resources of the innovation ecosystem.
