I retired from personal blogging in July 2008 but you can find me over at blog.xero.com
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The Technium network is 9 themed innovation centers funded by the Welsh Assembly. They provide a starting point for new businesses.
A Technium is like a next generation business incubator.
My impressions of incubators I’ve seen to date are that they are fringe and for primarily high tech and risky new businesses (though fashion incubators seem to be going well in NZ).
The Welsh spin is that these types of new businesses are the norm rather than the exception. The Techniums bring incubation into the mainstream.
In New Zealand, when you start a small business you pretty much do it all yourself. Find some property, sign a scary 3-6 year lease (without any real feel as to what your company will look like in 12 months), get broadband in the building, buy equipment, build a presentation and meeting room, and try to find some people who have done it before to tap for advice. It is hard.
The Techniums are distributed around Wales, and provide a unified and integrated approach to assisting new businesses. They provide focus for growth services like Intellectual Property, Funding, Marketing, Recruitment and so on. They make it very easy for any new business to just on with their core operations. There have a program of moving you through as you grow and finally graduate.
Graduating tenants of the Swansea Technium have got coordinated and are building their own facility close by so they can stay in the area.
I’ve learnt a lot on this trip. For Xero market entry of course, but also seeing how a country like Wales has taken a coordinated and integrated approach to economic development. New Zealand can definitely learn a lot from Wales.
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Ah interesting - therein lies my confusion Rod - I had thought that the technium’s where akin to our HiTech incubators and primarily concerned with that side of things. It’s great to hear that they are broad based. Could you indicate how diverse the spread of member businesses are at the different technium’s?
My opinion on our local HiTech incubators, is that some of them shouldn’t be called HiTech at all. One just had to look at residents at some of our HiTech incubators and see that some residents are definitely not high tech at all. I recalled that Icehouse had a resident that develop product to register stolen items online. To me it is not a hightech at all. If that is what Icehouse is looking for, then itself should be rename business incubator and not hitech incubator. I suspect that the reason some of our local hitech incubators are just taking in anyone with a business idea, because they are all competing to get residents in, so any business idea that comes along their doorstep , they feel oblige to take them in.
Xero won!
Well done everyone on the Xero team. IPO’s aside, this is a real credit to the concept and more importantly the execution this far!