Equipment: Antenna and Antenna Near Field

When the incubator is established, it will start accepting client companies. As we learned from our interviews at the incubators, an incubator needs to be selective about which clients it accepts. Having an incubator that lets in anyone might seem like it would make everyone happy, but would inevitably lead to problems for the incubator and the business later on. A business should have a reasonable chance of succeeding in order to be worth the incubator‘s time, money, and effort. Failing businesses can harm an incubator‘s reputation and financial stability. We learned that if a business is constantly struggling to maintain its finances, it cannot properly concentrate on its trade and grow. This is counter to the purpose of the incubator, which is to help the business expand. While the incubator is supposed to provide assistance in management and organization, it cannot do all the work for the client company. Therefore, a company must still be able to stand on its own to some degree; otherwise, it will just weigh the incubator down.

Another consideration is how open a client is with the incubator and how willing he or she is to share issues and problems with the incubator‘s advisors. We found that the Springfield Business Incubator in their contract with client has a requirement for the entrepreneur to openly discuss his or her problems and financial issues with advisors. One of the most important services an incubator can provide is counseling sessions with a team of advisors who offer advice to tenant companies. If a client is not willing to share their business problems, however, it makes helping them very difficult and wastes the incubator‘s resources. The incubator needs to stay apprised of the business situations that its clients face. Thus, it is important to ensure that

46 incoming clients are willing to accept help and talk freely with incubator representatives about their company.

Each incubator should have its own policies for acceptance. The Enterprise Center accepts businesses that have operated out of home for a few years and are in need for assistance or better space. Applicants that need help with writing their business plan or with other elements of starting a business are referred to the Small Business Development Center (SBDC), which is also housed within the building. The SBDC is an establishment designed to help entrepreneurs with the first steps of starting the business. Because Worcester also has its own SBDC on the Clark University campus and a Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) branch

downtown, a similar arrangement could be made in Worcester with those organizations. The proposed incubator could refer entrepreneurs to the SBDC or SCORE for help with the first steps of starting a business. When the entrepreneur has an official business plan and enough capital to pay the rent, the incubator can consider accepting him or her as a client.

Michael Holbrook, who works in Worcester‘s SBDC, said that the SBDC would be interested in helping with the incubator‘s client selection process. The Springfield Business Incubator houses SBDC, SCORE, and Small Business Administration (SBA) offices, which makes all their services easily accessible to incubator staff and clients. It would be ideal to have some business assistance organization offices inside the proposed Worcester incubator as well. Another factor to keep in mind when selecting clients is the variety of businesses already accepted into the incubator. For example, having two similar businesses in the incubator could lead to conflict and competition. Incubator tenants are supposed to interact and support one another, but if they are business rivals, it is not likely to happen. Depending on the focus, our proposed incubator will have to choose clients carefully, so that it does not create internal conflicts and stays loyal to the industries it intends to serve. Another possible aspect of the selection was suggested by Small Business and Entrepreneurship Class: students said that there is a danger of businesses using the services of the incubator and moving to a different town after graduation. To prevent that, the incubator can have a requirement in the contract for the business to stay in Worcester for a certain number of years after it leaves the incubator. An alternative to that would be to have special tax, property or other incentives for the businesses to stay in the city.

47 Along with the client selection, it is necessary that the incubator has a graduation policy in place. Graduation is a certain milestone in the company history when it is asked to leave the incubator. It can happen once the company‘s revenue exceeds some set limit, once the company outgrows the space or after a certain time period. Time is one of the most popular factors; the average reported by the NBIA is three years. Springfield incubator started with the policy of graduating businesses after three years of being in the incubator; however, they soon realized that often companies start expanding and hiring more employees at three years, and they still need assistance and advice. Based on that observation, the incubator extended the allowed time to five years. Unlike the Springfield incubator, Salem Enterprise Center does not have any graduation requirements; they currently have 46 clients, and only 12 have graduated since the establishment of the program.