Mississippi uni joins Small Business Development Center

University of Mississippi (Ole Miss) unveiled plans to boost its commercialisation strategy on Wednesday in partnership with the US government-sponsored Mississippi Small Business Development Center (SBDC).
The pilot program aims to beef up faculty-facing support by providing a central point of contact, similar to partnerships the SBDC already has in US states such as Arkansas, Georgia and North Carolina.
SBDC and the university will use the trial to align their operations across a number of areas, including promoting external collaboration and tech transfer and helping each academic department drive business development.
The operation will be based within the university’s Office of Technology Commercialization (OTC), working closely with Derek Stephens, a business counsellor at the SBDC’s Ole Miss campus, to draw up new supports for early-stage innovators.
Connecting university resources to the small business and entrepreneurship community is one of SBDC’s fundamental objectives. The centre’s Mississippi operation includes seven regional offices and helped start 230 businesses during the 2018-19 fiscal year.
Allyson Best, director of OTC, said: “This is another important step in the growth of UM’s commercialisation efforts. Early operational support is critical to the success of startups and their ability to contribute to the economic development of the region and state.”
Sharon Nichols, state director of the Mississippi Small Business Development Center, added:  “Applying this connectedness as it applies to university partners, we have taken time to map SBDC services with other university partners at University of Mississippi to find alignment.
“At the SBDC, we stand by collaboration and not duplication to best serve the entrepreneurs and small businesses throughout the state of Mississippi.”