Two new programs aim to help small businesses grow

In a joint effort designed to help North Coast entrepreneurs expand their businesses, Humboldt State University and the North Coast Small Business Development Center will launch two new companion services sponsored by the Headwaters Fund.

The HSU Competitive Intelligence Research service is designed to improve planning and decision-making for growing companies. Based on the successful concept of "economic gardening" developed in Littleton, Colorado, the program will use advanced market research to identify potential customers for local businesses.

As the name suggests, "economic gardening" seeks to grow jobs through entrepreneurial activity, as opposed to "economic hunting," which aims to recruit new companies into a struggling market.

According to Christian Gibbons, the director of business and industry affairs for the city of Littleton, the "economic gardening" concept was based on research by David Birch at MIT that indicated the great majority of all new jobs in any local economy were produced by the small, local businesses in the community.

By conducting advanced research on the demographics of a given business' customers and the strategies of its competitors, Competitive Intelligence can pinpoint potential customers across the country, gain information on alternative marketing strategies and identify industry trends.

"To launch the program, we have invited the Competitive Intelligence specialist from Littleton to present a training workshop on Thursday, March 6," said Maggie Gainer, director of HSU's Office for Economic & Community Development.

The specialist, Christine Hamilton-Pennell, ran Littleton's Economic Intelligence program for more than four years.

The other new service, to be run by the SBDC, has virtually the same goal -- helping companies with five to 50 employees grow their markets and workforces.

"Companies of this size have demonstrated that they can get over the first hurdles -- survival, sales growth, hiring their first employees, that sort of thing," said SBDC Executive Director Michael Kraft. "But they often don't have resources such as deep marketing expertise or an HR department to help them get to the next stage. That's what we'll help them do."

Kraft said he has yet to come up with a catchy name like "Competitive Intelligence" for the program, but the core activity is "data mining."

"HSU already owns quite a few databases, and they've got research talent," Kraft said. "The Headwaters fund gave money to get databases they didn't already have."

Through the data collected, the SBDC can help local businesses develop strategies to grow sales and profits.

Kraft said that he and Gainer quickly saw how the two programs could compliment each other.

"We were aware of each other's applications to Headwaters, and we really wanted to pass these folks to each other," he said. "There's a good number of companies that should tap into both of these programs."

Barbara O'Neal, interim director of the Headwaters Fund, agrees.

"We are pleased with the leverage that HSU and the SBDC are gaining from each other," she said. "They have designed this in a way that clients will benefit from the core strengths of each organization."

Many of the services are provided free of charge. Other services may involve a fee. To assess a project and its cost, contact Maggie Gainer at 826-3922 or gainer@humboldt.edu , or Michael Kraft at 445-1163 or kraft@northcoastsbdc.org .

Ryan Burns can be reached at 441-0563 or rburns@times-standard.com .