Kathryn Seely/Cornell University

Part of Cornell's Life Sciences Technology Building will be devoted to the IDEA Center, a business incubator.

When the $140 million New Life Sciences Technology Building (LSTB) opens in 2007, 11,000 square feet on two floors will be devoted to a center designed to foster start-up companies that want to commercialize technologies developed at Cornell University.

The Innovation Development and Economic Applications (IDEA) Center will be open to faculty, staff and students interested in developing their technologies. The center will supply know-how for every phase of moving an idea developed in a lab to the marketplace. Services will include access to state-of-the-art equipment and space, marketing and guidance from business experts for writing business plans, negotiating intellectual property concerns and identifying venture capital and other sources of funding.

The planning for this center started more than five years ago when funding was obtained for the building of the physical space. Students from the Johnson Graduate School of Management at Cornell conducted the bench studies and developed guidelines for the business incubator. To get ideas, they phoned and visited other university business incubators around the country, such as the one at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.

The students and planners then called for proposals, screened applicants and selected the first company, NOVOMER LLC, which creates custom biodegradable polymers from renewable resources. NOVOMER's designs are based on breakthrough research by Geoffrey Coates, Cornell professor of chemistry and chemical biology.

"We are starting ahead of schedule so we are ready to plug companies into the incubator when the building is ready," said Donna Chaudhuri, director of business development at Cornell's Center for Life Science Enterprise. "We've done all the bench studies, so now we want to test how the thing is working in a real-life setting."

NOVOMER was selected because it was in the right phase of development -- already started but still in the process of licensing its product. NOVOMER and a second company to be selected later this year will serve to test and fine-tune the protocols drafted by the Johnson School students.

Companies in the program will get recognition on campus that can be leveraged off campus, and researchers will have a place to develop business aspirations that are separate from the lab where pure experimentation occurs.

The IDEA Center, designed to accommodate different physical configurations and capable of being molded to a company's needs, consists of 10 wet labs, 10 dry/lab support rooms, 10 tenant offices, two shared equipment rooms and two cold rooms. In addition, the center provides 1,700 square feet of shared administrative, support, conference and interactive office space for both IDEA Center staff and temporary occupants who are in-house to provide expert service and advice on various business topics.

Occupants will benefit from shared services designed to support forming a company -- identifying venture capital, accessing state-of-the-art equipment, office and library services, flexible contracts, expandable space and receiving guidance from the center director and staff. The director and staff will provide entrepreneurs with business expertise, networks and other strategic tools to help make their venture a success.

The IDEA Center is expected to house approximately 10 to 12 tenant companies at any given time, and each will be able to stay for a specified number of years. Programs are being developed to assist companies with the transition from campus to the community. Special emphasis will be placed on retaining businesses in the region to continue their association with Cornell.

The center and the LSTB are part of Cornell's $600 million New Life Sciences Initiative, aimed at keeping the university competitive in light of vast changes in genomics and interdisciplinary research.