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Economic Development

GROWING A COMPANY: BUSINESS INCUBATORS, ETC.

The University can help faculty, staff and entrepreneurs from outside UMSL grow their company in facilities that nurture young businesses and those that provide additional space and assistance as companies mature.

BUSINESS INCUBATORS

UM-St. Louis administers two business incubator facilities that provide specialized facilities and services to start-up companies:

A 501(c)3 public-private-academic partnership financially supported by UM-St. Louis, the Missouri Department of Economic Development, and donors. UMSL also provides operational support to the CET. The Center provides young, technology-driven companies mostly in the life sciences with business and funding resources, specialized education and training, business-plan development assistance, and introductions to prospective investors.

Founded by UM-St. Louis with initial support from the U.S. Small Business Association and the Ameren Community Development Corporation, IT Enterprises (ITe) supports innovation in the high-growth fields of information technology and life sciences, providing the physical, computational, intellectual and human capital resources required for startup companies to grow. Anchored by a high-performance computing (HPC) center staffed by onsite employees and assisted by Ph.D. computer scientists, ITe provides not only computing capacity to startups, academia and industry but also the expertise to help solve fundamental R&D issues. For more information, email manager@ITenterprises-STL.org.

Additional business incubator facilities in the St. Louis region include:

NOTE: Nationally, 84 percent of incubator graduate companies remain in the regions where they first began.

 

RESEARCH & TECHNOLOGY PARKS


In the St. Louis region, UM and UMSL own and manage two Research and Technology Parks:

  • Cortex – St. Louis’ life sciences district

Four premier educational and research institutions — UM-St. Louis, Washington University, Saint Louis University and BJC HealthCare — established Cortex in 2002 to advocate and assure the St. Louis region’s economic progress as a center of life sciences research, development and commercialization.  The Cortex district is centrally located on several hundred acres in the city of St. Louis and provides space for emerging biotech companies in the next phase of development after completing the incubator stage.

Owned and managed by the University of Missouri, the Missouri Research Park officially opened in 1985. Today, more than 130 acres of land in the park are developed for high-tech and research facilities, and 17 tenant companies and agencies employ 2,000 people within the park.

To supplement the space offered at the Missouri Research Park, UMSL has a 100-acre business, technology and research park located on the University’s north campus next to Highway 70. The research park, which has attracted substantial interest from both small and large ventures, is now home to the headquarters of Express Scripts Inc., one of the nation’s largest pharmacy benefit managers. ESI is the largest Fortune 500 company with corporate headquarters on a university campus.