The Northwest Pennsylvania Innovation Beehive Network is a
grant-funded collaborative initiative to enhance business expansion
and development in the Erie area. Blasco Library, Penn State
Behrend, Edinboro University, Gannon University, and Mercyhurst
University are each responsible for a specific service.
The Gannon Beehive is located at the Center for Business
Ingenuity. CBI encourages an unprecedented level of collaboration
between business students and budding entrepreneurs, seasoned
business faculty and consultants in a facility that looks and feels
like a major corporate headquarters. This type of collaboration
further enhances the delivery of services to entrepreneurs in the
community.
The Center for Business Ingenuity at Gannon University leverages
faculty, staff and students located within the Dahlkemper School of
Business, the Erie Technology Incubator, and the Small Business
Development Center to support business planning, development, and
advancement in support of the NWPA Beehive Network.
By the numbers, outcomes associated with Gannon's Beehive
include:
- 185 Clients Served
- 5 New Businesses Formed
- 12 Jobs Created
- $650,000 Additional Investments Leveraged
- 59 Feasibility Business Plans Developed
- 2 Collaboration Partners
- 5 Classes Engaged
- 93 Students Directly Engaged
(Data reported as of October 2019)
The number and diversity of products produced results from the
varied types of business needs and an intricate referral system,
which includes the NWPA Innovation Beehive, Gannon's CBI and the
local entrepreneurial network.
Funding
The Innovation Beehive Network at Gannon University is funded by the U.S. Economic Development Association (EDA), the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority (ECGRA), and the Dr. & Mrs. Arthur William Phillips Charitable Trust.
Services
The Best Practices Financial Analysis product
This Gannon University Beehive business product utilizes sound collection methodologies to down select a business cluster that the Beehive customer is looking to compete in. The grouping of businesses that are collected will be contacted and asked a short set of questions to understand the financial choices a business's made in their early life cycle. The final survey information will be analyzed and reported into user friendly sections to the final report. Finally, the Best Practices Financial Analysis product will have a customized set of financial descriptions and learning videos to add readily available resources into the final product.
The Entrepreneur Presentation product
This second Gannon University Beehive product is a collaborative business product that ties together business cluster information to evidence an entrepreneur market positioning with customer strategy information. The Entrepreneur Presentation product will translate cluster competition to idea/product uniqueness as well as competition attribute comparisons. The final review will be a set of product descriptions to U.S. Patent results. The final slides will incorporate customer revenue projections and expense scenarios, as well as individual/team information to round out a solid first presentation power point offering.
Crowd Funding Friendly Analysis
An entrepreneur's product may possess early crowd funding appeal. The Gannon University Beehive Crowd Funding Friendly Analysis product, a current Kickstarter scrape of current campaigns in the idea/product Kickstarter category, will be collected into an attribute chart. Additional aggregate Kickstarter category performance history will be added into the attribute chart to inform the Beehive customer of the Crowd Funding Friendly positioning.
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Contact
Gannon University Beehive
Center for Business Ingenuity
900 State Street, Suite 008
Erie, PA 16501
Phone: 814-871-7452
Email: gleason006@gannon.edu
For more information on the Northwest Pennsylvania Innovation
Beehive Network, visit www.nwpabeehive.com.