Incubator Basks In Spotlight Sandpoint Facility To Host International Symposium

When the mangos were ripe in the West African nation of Burkina Fosa, Mike Whiteman would see women lined up along the roadsides.

Each had a mountain of mangos to sell.

The women could have dried the mangos, and sold the fruit for higher prices later in the year. But they needed training to start such a business.

“That’s where small business incubators can really play a role,” said Whiteman, a former U.S. international aid worker, who now heads the International Program Office at the University of Idaho.

Through incubators, “you can teach business skills, basic marketing and money management,” he said.

Whiteman is the keynote speaker at an international symposium Friday and Saturday at the Bonner Business Incubator in Sandpoint.

The symposium will draw participants from as far away as Mongolia, Ethiopia and Papua New Guinea. The event grew out of an increasing international interest in the Sandpoint incubator, said Sandpoint Mayor David Sawyer.

The city started the Bonner Business Incubator 6-1/2 years ago as an economic development tool. The incubator has office space for 10 start-up companies, and a commercial kitchen for local gourmet food producers. Low rent and services such as free business counseling allow the companies to grow until they are resilient enough to move out and make it on their own.

While Sandpoint’s incubator isn’t unique, it’s one of few located in a rural area that has a commercial kitchen. The National Business Incubation Association in Athens, Ohio, frequently recommends it as a “must see” to economic development specialists from other countries, Sawyer said.

“They consider our kitchen the best rural commercial kitchen in the United States,” he said. “We see it as a model that can be customized to emerging business in new market economies.”

The incubator concept was developed in the United States during the 1950s as a way to reduce high failure rates among new companies. The idea also shows promise for developing countries, where few business owners have formal training.

To move from a subsistence to a cash economy, farmers must learn how to preserve and market their food, Whiteman said.

In addition to Mongolia, Ethiopia and New Guinea, this weekend’s symposium will draw representatives from Tanzania, the Russian republic of Kalmykia, Arab nations and the Seychelles, a chain of islands in the Pacific Ocean.

If the symposium is successful, the representatives may come back next spring for one- to two-week workshops focusing on adapting the incubator concept to different cultures.

“We don’t want to be the ugly Americans and just say, ‘This is how we do it in Sandpoint,”’ said Laurie Katana, the incubator’s office manager.