TEDCO today announced its request for proposals for the creation of innovative strategies that demonstrate advancement in the state-of-the-art of business incubation. TEDCO will allocate $300,000 in non-reimbursable grant funding to the Incubation Challenge and will make up to two awards, depending on quality of proposals submitted.
“There is a shared sense that as time goes on, our State’s start-up companies must continually ‘raise their game’ in order to compete successfully for talent, customers, investment, and visibility,” stated John Wasilisin, TEDCO president and chief operating officer. “As such, all of the organizations incubating Maryland’s start-up companies must, in turn, continually innovate and improve in order to provide the needed assistance. The opportunity exists for TEDCO to leverage its leadership role within the innovation ecosystem and its financial resources to stimulate innovation within this community of organizations and individuals dedicated to supporting the State’s entrepreneurs.”
In order to help Maryland’s entrepreneurial support network keep pace with the ever-increasing demands placed upon the State’s start-up community, TEDCO has created the Incubation Challenge. The goal of this new initiative is to encourage big, innovative ideas that will result in new, creative strategies designed to better prepare Maryland’s entrepreneurs to compete for talent, customers, investment, and visibility, all while maintaining a principal place of business in Maryland
A pre-proposal conference will be held on June 14 at TEDCO in Columbia; two additional sessions will be held via teleconference on June 15 and 16 at 2 p.m. These sessions are not mandatory.
Incubation Challenge proposals are due July 31, 2017; and the request for proposal details can be found online. For more information, contact Neil Davis, TEDCO’s director of Entrepreneurial Development, at ndavis@tedco.md.