PrintDo not under imagine the Idea Center.
Set up to take entrepreneurs from the idea stage to a successful new business, the Bismarck business incubator offers a great deal more than a desk, phone, copy machine and gross of fresh business cards. It's about solving problems using the experience of seasoned business people. It's about doing homework and planning. It's about sharing basic resources with other startups.
If you listen to Dewey Tietz, who helped create the Idea Center, it's also about a creative environment - about synergism (working together in such a way that the total affect is greater than that of the sum of the parts). "It's about how passionate you are," he said.
Passionate because as the entrepreneurs take their ideas through the process of becoming a business. Some fall by the wayside, and it takes determination and spirit to keep pushing ahead.
It also takes patience,said Idea Center Director Julie Kuennen.
Tietz should know. He started Cross Country Courier with one pickup.
Altogether, the Idea Center has looked at more than 90 projects. Some came scrawled on a napkin and others with prototypes carved out of wood, Tietz said.
The screening of ideas begins when the entreprenuer meets with the board of directors of the Idea Center, Kuennen said. Then there's homework for the entreprenuer, perhaps some product or idea testing. If things get serous, the next step is a strategic plan.
At each step along the way, if necessary, there are mentors associated with the Idea Center that can help solve problems for the fledgling business.
The center's name, said Tietz, is an acronym: "incubator for the development of entrepreneurial activities."
"We surround people with experience and provide services at the lowest cost," Kuennen said. The Idea Center staff offers knowledge in marketing, accounting, human resources and facilitiating.
The Idea Center has a wisdom team that can provide specialized skills and problem-solving for the startups. But Tietz said the wisdom team doesn't make decisions for them. "We can't do that," he said.
Insteading of struggling to solve basic business problems at home in the basement or garage, the person trying to start a business can set up shop in the Idea Center and share basic services with other startups.
The Idea Center interior design is a work in progress. There's a large reception area where business interns from the University of Mary, Bismarck State College or United Tribes Technical College can work, providing support for the entrepreneurs. The main ground-floor area has a mural giving the visitor the flavor of the New York skyline and Central Park. The entrepreneurs have space - a studio for the photographer, straightforward office for the software developer - but it's small.
There's room for eight entrepreneurs in the Idea Center.
Kuennen, who has experience with startups from her time with Intel Corp. earlier in her business career, said it's about appropriate space, focus, access exposure. It's also about confidentiality.
"The office space is small, but we want them to grow out of it," she said.