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MSBDC
Hosts Open House at Regional Office
Close to 200 people gathered on the Springfield Technical Community College campus June 16 to look over the new offices of the western regional Massachusetts Small Business Development Center (MSBDC) Network. They also came to make connections with others in business and to hear successful entrepreneurs talk about how the regional office and other resources have helped them. The MSBDC is a partnership of the U.S. Small Business Administration, Commonwealth Department of Economic Development and a consortium of higher education institutions, led by the Isenberg School of Management. The regional office's director, Dianne Fuller Doherty, hosted the program. School of Management dean Tom O'Brien, Chancellor David Scott, and Georgianna Parkin, state director of the MSBDC network addressed the guests, as did a panel of entrepreneurs. O'Brien said the center and the school of management are trying to keep small business development, entrepreneurial efforts and graduates in Western Massachusetts. Pointing to the extensive support for business in the region, he praised the cooperative efforts of many community business resources, including the MSBDC, Small Business Development Center, Mass Ventures, the Nonprofit Center, EntreNetwork and the Electronic Enterprise Institute. "We'd better take advantage of the times now when business is good because business will get bad, and we'll get through that a lot better together," he said. O'Brien also expressed enthusiasm for Scott's efforts on behalf of business in the region, citing Scott's provision of seed money for Mass Ventures and emphasis on outreach efforts through Continuing Education. "The chancellor has been trying to build a university with a heart, and he knows where that heart is located: in Western Massachusetts," he said. In his remarks, Scott also emphasized the importance of strong cooperative efforts among businesses in the region and between businesses and the University. "Networks will be critical to the university of the future," he said. "Like charity, networking begins at home." Scott said that, although the face of economic development in the region has changed over the years, the University's mission to enhance it remains a priority. Originally designed to support agricultural efforts, the University's expanding role now includes supporting a variety of economic activities. "In a very real way, the University of Massachusetts was created 137 years ago for economic development. It's a much more complex and sophisticated environment, but it's still economic development." Entrepreneur and panel member Don Lesser, '81G, told the audience that came to the area to study in the English Department's MFA program and wound up founding Pioneer Training, which offers professional training, software support and custom programming for personal computers to the business community. "I am, in fact, a spin-off of the University," Lesser said. He said he appreciated the MSBDC's fast track entrepreneurial course. "Allen Kronick was particularly helpful with the financials," he said. Kronick is a senior management counselor. Panel members Sunia Hood of Taxi's Dog Bakery in Northampton and Great Barrington and Deborah Kruger of Psych Billing in Amherst and New York also praised MSBDC staff for their mentoring skills. Kruger said she turned to MSBDC when, after years of working alone in her home-based billing service for mental health providers, she "got tired of turning business away." She said a great source of help to her in expanding her business was financial analyst Lyne Kendall, whom she called "kind, insightful, challenging, and a walking encyclopedia of the business world." Hood said the network of business support in the region got her dog bakery and grooming service on its feet. "I would not be here if it weren't for the SBA (U.S. Small Business Administration), Allen and the (MSBD) Center," she said. |
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