Author: Mark Berson
Publisher: Small Business Administration
Date: July 13, 2012

It seems that you can’t go a day without hearing about the need for America to nurture its entrepreneurs. This mantra was quite abstract to me until I took a trip recently to Gainesville, Florida, home of the University of Florida  (UF) and a host of impressive, innovative health, biotech and social media companies.

Gainesville?! That’s no Silicon Valley, you might say.  In fact, they are doing some very interesting things there, and they’re doing them right.  Gainesville is home to the Florida Innovation Hub, now located in a brand new multimillion dollar facility downtown. According to its website, “the Florida Innovation Hub was created to serve as catalyst for startup companies whose technologies emanated from laboratories at the University of Florida and throughout the state. [Its] mission is to provide them with the infrastructure, logistics and resources needed to get up and running effectively and efficiently. In doing so, the Innovation Hub hopes to help those companies and others bring research discoveries to the marketplace, creating additional jobs for Floridians.” Read more here.