Bauer Innovation Center Expands to Help Local Business Thrive

Additions to the Innovation Center at the University of Houston – C.T. Bauer College of Business were recently at the center of campus news, when the director of the Wolff Center of Entrepreneurship stopped by Bauer Business Focus.

Bauer Business Focus is a morning radio segment that broadcasts every Friday morning, letting those in the Bauer business community hear business news, trends and issues from the experts. In early September, Ken Jones, director of the Wolff Center of Entrepreneurship at Bauer, stopped by the radio show to discuss the university’s latest additions to the Innovation Center of Energy Research Park.

At present, the Innovation Center is home to seven startups, including companies like REEcycle and WAAVE, which are led by Bauer alumni. Over the next few months, four more startups will join the center. Depending on the size of each company, the center will eventually have the capacity for roughly 20 startups, which will each have access to full lab and research facilities.

“What we’re going to do is try to attract and further a lot of the University of Houston’s intellectual property that’s now got businesses that are around it that have licensed it,” Jones said in a statement. The center will also strategically invite entities that may not be directly associated with the University of Houston but might have complementary technologies, he added. 

However, he adds, the goal will certainly not be to keep the startups in that space forever but rather to provide growing businesses with the tools they need to go on and survive as a viable company.

“Our job,” said Jones, “is to create jobs and to provide resources such that the likelihood of their being successful is enhanced.”

regions: Houston

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