5 Reasons Why Incubators are so Popular for SMBs

With the popularity of telecommuting and startup businesses, many people are finding that they no longer need a traditional brick and mortar office with all of the expenses that come with it. Instead, these people are turning to business incubators, a place where people can work with other people and receive the support services, work space, networking opportunities, training, and financial freedom they need to succeed.

Business incubators provide a laundry list of benefits to anyone who joins one; however, they’re extremely beneficial to SMBs who simply don’t have the knowledge, tools, or resources to take their companies to the next level. Check out the five reasons why business incubators are so popular for SMBs.

Work Space

Sometimes your business doesn’t require a brick and mortar office, but working at home or from a coffee shop can become mundane after a while. Business incubators provide coworking space that people find beneficial. These provide a shared working environment that allows people to be surrounded by other individuals and receive all the perks of an office, such as a printer, Wi-Fi, phone, conference rooms, and much more.

Support Services

When SMBs use a business incubator, they can receive support services that would otherwise be unobtainable or too expensive. Instead, you can rely on the other individuals in the business incubator to provide the support services you need, or you and the others can share on the expense of marketing, business insurance, legal, or other services that may be required.

Networking Opportunities

Every successful businessperson knows that networking is essential. With a business incubator, there are so many networking possibilities, which is why they will just continue to grow. Individuals using business incubators have easy access to successful entrepreneurs, financial professionals, or others that can help them boost their business. Plus, many incubators also host events, which provides even more opportunity for networking.

Training

Receiving the right training is important to continue taking your business further. However, sometimes this training can be too expensive or unavailable if trying to secure it on your own. However, with a business incubator, you can have access to training. Sometimes the incubator will provide training for certain topics or programs, or you can feed off the training from the other people you’re working with. Either way, it’s a win-win situation.

Financial Freedom

One of the biggest benefits of a business incubator is that SMBs receive financial freedom. Instead of trying to find the money to spend on rent, and instead of spending money on training, networking, and support services, as well as employee salaries and other business expenses, they receive all of this with a business incubator. This can significantly reduce the amount of money your business will spend, allowing you to either reinvest it back into your business or use it for profits.

The other financial benefit of business incubators is the help in securing future loans. Many incubators have built relationships with people looking to invest in business, and this provides you with an easier way to get connected to those who can provide the financing you need to take your company to the next level.

If you’re a small or medium-sized business, try to find a local business incubator in your area, and use this tool to help your business thrive.

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North and South building relationships through the Irishbizparty conference

It’s time to get your tickets folks!

Irish Biz Party

The online phenomenon that is Irish Biz Party have chosen Fermanagh as the destination for their fifth national business conference, which takes place in the Killyhevlin Hotel, Enniskillen, on Wednesday 14th October.

group fermanaghfermanagh conf jpeg

Samantha Kelly

Founded by Bank of Ireland Start up Hero award winner and Tweeting Goddess, Samantha Kelly, Irish Biz Party is an online community of businesses who advise, guide and promote each other. Irish businesses come together every Wednesday night on Twitter, using the hashtag #IrishBizParty and through collective cross promotion and discussion, help each other to reach millions of potential customers in just 2 hours. As well as the weekly Twitter network, Irish Biz Party also have an official membership package, and a very active private Facebook Group where over 3,000 Irish businesses seek and share advice and guidance, support and promote each other. Samantha believes the success of the conferences to date is down to the organic and natural progression to meeting offline and in person. It is also a great way for new businesses to get involved in the Irish Biz Party community, and can really give them a strong launch pad to grow their business nationwide.

me and aine

Dublin, Kerry and Wexford

Dublin, Kerry and Wexford have played host to the tribe of businesses, with hugely successful events. Samantha Kelly says, “The decision was taken to bring the full weight of the Irish Biz Party movement to the north of Ireland. We know that business owners have the same struggles all over the country, and the north west is an area that we felt could greatly benefit from the event, the support, advice, learning and networking opportunities. “We considered a number of places to host the event, but it was down to the work of local businesswoman, Aine Bermingham, and the support of the local business community, Fermanagh Omagh District Council, and Fermanagh Enterprise, that we chose Fermanagh. There’s a thriving business community here, and we want to offer as much support as we can. “We’re very excited about bringing the conference here, and I’ve been thrilled by the response both locally and nationally.

Fermanagh

Fermanagh businesses are embracing this opportunity, and there are businesses from all over Ireland booking tickets, so there’s a fantastic buzz about it already. I’d encourage any business looking for help and support, or a chance to learn and network with fellow business owners, to join us at the event.” Keynote Speakers on the day will come from across Ireland, the UK and even Europe to share a plethora of expertise, including social media experts, business leaders and pricing experts.

IEDR

The headline sponsor on the day is IEDR. Donal O’Nuallain of IEDR says: “We’re delighted to be the headline sponsors of the Irish Biz Party conference. It provides a great opportunity for Irish businesses to share knowledge, learnings and network with each other with the goal of growing their business above and beyond what the Irish Biz Party team have already achieved and facilitated to date. .ie domains provide an identifiably Irish online presence for businesses so our involvement with the Irish Biz Party is really strong as it allows us to engage with Irish SMEs in a productive and positive environment,”

Local Fermanagh businesses

Local Fermanagh businesses are also getting involved, with the list of sponsors including Inn Stock Services, Monaghan Bros., and Corrigan and Co. Fermanagh and Omagh District Council are also a sponsor of the event, and are actively encouraging local businesses to get involved. “It’s important to us that these events are accessible for small businesses, as that’s what Irish Biz Party is all about, so we keep the ticket prices low, and we couldn’t do that without the generosity of our sponsors, which we are very grateful for.” said Samantha Kelly.

Book now

Tickets for the full day including lunch are priced at only £50.00 and can be booked online via irishbizparty.ie. Book here 

Keep the party going by sharing…Thanks everyone! See you there!

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thinkbusiness

Sun Life Enterprise & Innovation Awards

Sun Life Financial has worked alongside Waterford Institute of Technology to promote enterprise and innovation among Computing students and this was never more evident than at the fourth annual Sun Life Enterprise & Innovation Awards.

Two outstanding students picked up the annual awards. The Innovation Award for a project that demonstrated uniqueness went to Sophie Renshaw from Charleville, Co Cork for her project ‘Deploying Openstack on Small Scale Architecture’.

The Enterprise Award for a project that demonstrated commercial potential went to Samuel Haycock from Clonmel, Co Tipperary for his QRLang project, allowing for complete games to be coded into a QR code.

Competition for the two awards was fierce with 20 projects submitted from a pool of final year honours undergraduate projects. Ten finalists invited to showcase their projects at an exhibition at Sun Life’s newly refurbished office in Waterford.

Following the exhibition, David Healy, Senior Vice President Client and Technology Services, SLF, United States, presented Sophie and Samuel each with a prize of €1,000.

Commenting at the ceremony, David Healy said, “The level of innovation and application of technology I have seen here today is outstanding and it’s only through innovation and idea generation that the global economy will continue to grow. It is really important for Sun Life to maintain and develop our links w  ith colleges such as WIT. I would like to congratulate WIT for the quality of students and projects we have seen here today and reiterate our commitment to nurture this type of innovation at the Institute. I’m looking forward to being part of this event again next year.”

Professor Willie Donnelly, President of WIT and founder of the globally renowned ICT research centre TSSG congratulated Sun Life on its courageous decision to set up in Waterford 16 years ago which has had immeasurable benefits for the city and the wider south east.

Prof Donnelly went on to say that “the institute and Sun Life have forged a deep relationship founded on strong synergies and mutual goals. Our two organisations have collaborated on multiple levels over the years at both undergraduate and postgraduate level. The Masters in Communications developed collectively by WIT and Sun Life defines the industry-academic collaboration at the heart of what a technological university is about. At the centre of the programme is the concept of academic responsiveness building on the institute’s excellence in teaching and research to deliver regional economic impact.”

Karen Burns, General Manager Sun Life Waterford remarked on the standard and quality of the projects as ‘outstanding’.

Outside of these awards, Sun Life has a long standing relationship with the institute with 60% of the workforce having studied on undergraduate or postgraduate courses at some point in their career.

The successful finalists were: Samuel Haycock, Sophie Renshaw, Tony Finn, Stephen Long, Jamie Hegarty, David Ryan, Jamie Moore, Daniel Treyvaud, Eamonn Ryan and Seán Bray.

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Calling all Innovators & Entrepreneurs, we need your help & your green VOTE !!

As with any Irish technology company, we all suffer unique challenges when growing business internationally. As a country we have a small population so we struggle when trying to make as much noise as our International competitors. Even places we assume are tiny states such as Haiti & Togo have twice and three times our population.

Hence we need your help…

One of our company’s, Surface Power HONE which has developed a revolutionary “daylight” powered Nano-heat engine technology is short-listed (final 18 was judged by experts) for the 2Degrees Champions Award –  “Innovation of the Year” which is the world’s leading collaboration platform and service for sustainable business with over 46,500 members from 177 countries. https://www.2degreesnetwork.com/

Surface Power HONE has nearly 7,000 installations of this patented technology over 8 countries to date and it has been kept fairly secretive until recently. The technology was field tested in the West of Ireland & New Zealand as the daylight levels are some of the lowest in the OECD. In short, it replaces the use of oil and gas for heating and cooling with free daylight. Have a look at LIVE customers on our website such as the UK National Health Service running their hospital’s central heating on free “daylight” (sounds mad but true !!)

The next phase of the 2Degrees “Innovation of the Year Awards” is a voting stage which will reduce the final 18 to 5 for the big awards ceremony and we need your help and your vote. 

Although already in the short-list of 18, we are the only Irish Technology company in this shortlist and are up against huge players such as Nestle, General Motors & B&Q.

You can vote for us by clicking the link below to get us into the final 5 and we thank you in advance for that vote. Be sure to tweet it afterwards using the link so we can personally send you a thank you tweet. Go raibh maith agat as do chabhair.

Best Regards, John Quinn, CEO. (Twitter – @johnquinn_irl )

Read our story and VOTE from below.

https://www.2degreesnetwork.com/groups/2degrees-community/resources/surface-powers-nano-engine-harvests-light-generate-heating-and-cooling/

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