St. Louis Region's Entrepreneurial Development Efforts Take Major Step Forward With Launch of "Innovate St. Louis"

May 31, 2006

For more information, contact
Gary Broome at (314) 444-1171

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:

ST. LOUIS -- Following a number of months of planning, civic leaders and the St. Louis Regional Chamber & Growth Association (RCGA) today announced that “Innovate St. Louis” has been established as a new 501©(3) organization.  Chartered by business, civic, university leaders, and the RCGA, Innovate St. Louis is designed to enhance the region’s entrepreneurial environment and to catalyze the emergence of the St. Louis region as a global hub of innovation and entrepreneurship. 

RCGA Board member and Technology Gateway Chair Dr. William A. Peck has shepherded the development of Innovate St. Louis in his capacity as RCGA Board Chair for Technology.

“Innovate St. Louis will be a high-level organization, limited in size, transforming in mission, and flexible in implementation,“ Peck noted. “It will sponsor multiple activities, which, alone, and in partnership with others, will provide unique contributions to a strong vital entrepreneurial culture in our community.” 

He concluded, “Innovate St. Louis will stimulate, promote, catalyze, and monitor its sponsored activities.”

Innovate St. Louis is an outgrowth of the Technology Gateway Alliance, which was established by the RCGA in 1998 as a successor to its then-Science & Technology Committee.

“Innovate St. Louis’ core mission to enhance the entrepreneurial and innovation environment will strongly complement the RCGA’s overall regional economic development and deal-specific expansion and recruitment efforts with individual entrepreneurial firms and venture capital investors,” noted RCGA President and Chief Executive Officer Richard C.D. Fleming.

“It’s been said that effective economic development includes both hunting and gardening; Innovate St. Louis will significantly add to the region’s ability to grow entrepreneurial companies,” he observed.

Although a relatively recent entrant compared to some other communities, the St. Louis region has made considerable progress in this regard.

Recently, Battelle and other consultants have concluded that St. Louis possesses the right mix of ingredients to become a major hub of innovation and entrepreneurial activity across a range of technologies. 

Further, the region has a unique set of assets in its outstanding universities, replete with pace-making research, highly productive technology-based industries and communications centers, mounting angel and venture capital financing capacity, a robust regional economic development program, and abundant incubator and emerging post-incubator facilities.  In a relatively short time, St. Louis has become a world leader in plant and life sciences.

Innovate St. Louis will succeed and expand the activities of Technology Gateway, in collaboration with the many people and entities who share this transforming vision.  In partnership with the region’s outstanding universities, industries, civic and economic development organizations, foundations and other not-for-profit entities, Innovate St. Louis will work to achieve a new culture of innovation and entrepreneurship.

Innovate St. Louis will sponsor multiple activities, which, alone and in partnership with others, will provide unique contributions to a strong, positive economic and social impact in the region. 

Innovate St. Louis initiatives will include:

• Establishing new technology-specific coalitions modeled in part after the successful Plant and Life Sciences Coalition created in 2002 by Civic Progress and the RCGA.
  
  Innovate St. Louis’ first such coalition will be the Information & Communications Technology Coalition. Planning for the Coalition on Information and Communication Technology has been initiated.
  
  The Coalition is envisaged as promoting innovation, beginning with the identification and education of potential innovators/entrepreneurs, providing opportunities for new commercial enterprises, understanding and catalyzing collaborative efforts to satisfy the work-force needs of IT users, among other activities.
  
  
• Innovate St. Louis will carry out its core programs through a virtual Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship – in collaboration with academic, foundation, industry and government programs, and with individual advisors.
  
  It will identify potential and declared innovators/entrepreneurs and undertake to reduce the barriers for effective translation of their projects into commercially successful entities.
  
  The Center will provide opportunities for education, networking and business.

The Innovate St. Louis Board will be comprised of 15 to 20 directors who will oversee all of the operations of the organization.  The staff will consist of a full-time Executive Director and a full-time Secretary. 

The RCGA has committed start-up seed capital funding and support for Innovate St. Louis; the balance of the organization’s operating funding will be raised through civic and philanthropic grants.  Further, with the evolution of Tech Gateway into Innovate St. Louis, the RCGA will encourage present Tech Gateway civic investors to financially support Innovate St. Louis.

Innovate St. Louis also will work closely with the RCGA economic development team.  In tandem with Innovate St. Louis’ mission to enhance the region’s entrepreneurial environment, RCGA’s economic development team will add enhanced “deal specific” entrepreneurial capacities, through the recruitment of a new vice president who will focus on the expansion and recruitment of emerging entrepreneurial companies, as well as expanding venture capital in the region.