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Tech Centers to Partner; State-Chartered Group to Work With British County to Promote Smaller Firms on Both Sides

Posted on: Friday, 18 November 2005, 06:00 CST

By Jeffrey Kelley

Virginia, meet England.

England, Virginia.

Virginia's Center for Innovative Technology, a state-chartered group, signed an agreement yesterday with Kent County, England, to help promote small and mid-size technology firms on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Herndon-based center, which promotes Virginia's technology companies, along with Technology Enterprise Kent, which has a similar purpose in England, will work with companies in both geographic areas to expand one another's markets, exchange knowledge and help form business partnerships.

"The global multinationals are there already," said Peter Jobse, president and chief executive of the Center for Innovative Technology, noting that the new program is really meant to help smaller firms.

"If you're looking for advanced technologies to complement the technology that you own or you're advancing, you may be able to find partners overseas. If you had an application that you felt would be great in the United Kingdom, this provides a channel to reach those markets," he said.

Virginia and Kent will test the program in January, outlining five technologies and the businesses here and in England that develop them.

Those five products or services have not been determined yet, Jobse said.

Virginia is the first state to join with Kent in its networking program, called the Strategic Innovation Gateway Network, or SIGN. Once the group becomes operational, Jobse said the organization could look beyond Virginia and England for more countries and states to add to the network.

The goal is "global reach with local benefit," said Peter Parsons, president and chief executive of Technology Enterprise Kent. The county, with a population of roughly 1.6 million, is just southeast of London and stretches to the English Channel. For companies in search of a solution to a business problem, "there is somebody at the other end of the gateway who knows the area better than they do."

Jim Dingus, principal of On enterFrame/new media solutions LLC, said he would have to consider such a partnership before becoming involved.

"The only thing coming from my perspective, being a small business, is how much time would I be spending on administrative work" and how things such as conversion rates would translate, said Dingus, who runs the small multimedia design company out of his home in Bon Air.

"If I have to spend twice as much time on it as I would on something here, it probably wouldn't be worth it," Dingus said.

But, he said, Europeans are very "forward-thinking" in graphics and design, which interests Dingus in the possibility of doing business overseas.

"I'd been willing to spend twice as much time on the paperwork if the payoff is good," he said.

Source: Richmond Times - Dispatch

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