The Rhode Island School of Design’s new Design & Business Entrepreneurship Center in Providence, part of the Center for Integrative Technology, will fuse the business, art and design worlds.
The idea is to create a learning environment for new businesses and entrepreneurs who want to bring their business or product to the mainstream, and for graduate students who want to immerse themselves in the process.
The Design & Business Entrepreneurship Center is a training and consulting program that provides workspace for nine businesses and is geared toward helping design-based entrepreneurs, inventors, innovators and product developers during the growth stages of their business. It is a part of RISD and managed by The Center for Design & Business (CDB), a joint venture between RISD and Bryant College.
“It extends the mission of the center – to bring the design and the business communities together for economic benefit,” said Cheryl A. Faria, director of The Center for Design & Business.
The undertaking by RISD to renovate and refurbish the old building at 169 Weybosset Street, where the program will be housed, cost $9 million and began less than a year ago. The school is leasing the building, most recently occupied by Ross-Simons Jewelers, from Stanley Weiss Associates and hopes to have the entire building in use by January 2003. Two million of the nine million dollars is coming from the federal government through money obtained from the Small Business Administration through the office of Rep. Patrick Kennedy, who is a member of the Commerce-Justice-State and Judiciary Subcommittee on Appropriations in the House of Representatives..
This fall, Faria and her staff will be screening applicants to fill the office space, located on the second floor of the six-story building. Faria said she expects her clients and their staff, up to 25 people, will be moving into the not-yet-finished office after January 1. Construction is continuing on the first, second and fourth floors.
RISD’s Center for Design & Business Entrepreneurship will feature nine office spaces, ranging in size from 150 to 320 square feet for the nine businesses they will house. There will also be a conference room, a meeting room and a resource library on the second floor, in addition to the CDB staff.
The businesses and entrepreneurs will move into the offices for a minimum of one year (and no more than two years), and will utilize the resources provided to them at the center and at RISD. Once they move into their respective offices, Faria and her staff will assess the entrepreneurs to determine which resources they will need, including classes and aid from graduate students.
“The purpose [of the program] is for them to use the resources here and move on,” once they have established themselves, she said. “It takes what we’ve been doing for five years and brings it to a centralized location.”
For the last five years, the CDB has been operating in the same fashion, advising and consulting starter businesses, from their current location at 20 Washington Place. Now, the new center will allow them to move all of their efforts into one building with artists, designers and architects, Faria said.
The sixth floor of the building contains the interior architecture program, which operates with approximately 90 graduate and undergraduate students. The fifth floor is for graphic design and textiles, with 45 graphic design graduate students and 12 textiles students. The fourth floor will be digital media and will have 30 positions available. The third floor will be continuing education. The first floor is for the graduate studies office and graduate student gallery and the basement will be a print and wood shop, and spray booths. Each of the floors’ designs reflect the craft that will be housed there, and many of the faculty and students helped design the space, furniture and fixtures, Faria said.
“One of the things we’re hoping is that the businesses will utilize the RISD students” and their talents to help them get their businesses off the ground, said Matt Montgomery, senior media specialist for RISD’s Department of External Relations. “We’re hoping it’s a reciprocal relationship,” that will allow the students to learn more about entrepreneurs and their businesses.
Although the building is always open, Faria said that it will be mostly utilized by graduate students, adding that 80 percent of the school’s graduate students, as well as graduate students from Bryant College, will use the center, and can take Faria’s business classes for free.
“Business people will be surrounded by creative people all day,” she said.
Faria said she has been helping three different types of businesses during the last five years:
The traditional business – a graphic designer or digital designer who has been working from his or her home for a few years and “wants to take it to the next level”
An original idea – an inventor or designer who has developed something unique and now wants to market and sell it to the masses
A small manufacturing company – a small group that now needs help developing their designs and products to make them more marketable
Faria added that while those are the three types of entrepreneurs she is hoping will fill the new space next January, she said she’d also like to bring in a student/faculty corporate-sponsored project.
The former entrepreneur said the relationship between the entrepreneurs and students will vary depending on what their needs are. For example, a Web designer could hire a RISD or Bryant graduate student in digital media to explore new Web technology, she said. A product design business that needs patent information or research could hire a Bryant graduate student to help them with the research and patent process.
Training programs available to entrepreneurs include information on how to develop a business plan, how to market and run a successful business, and how to market a new product, invention or business with a sales package.
Faria and her staff will be holding informational sessions in the Washington Place location each month to allow potential entrepreneurs to learn more about the program, the center and whether they would be good candidates. There is a two-part application process, where the CDB staff and Faria will evaluate each business and determine if this is the right move for them, and ask, “Is our help going to make a difference?”
Candidates must then produce a mini-business plan and present it. This year RISD was able to offer the spaces for one-third of their regular rental prices, just for the first year of the program. This year clients will pay $650-$850 a month, depending on how many people they bring in. After this year, the monthly rentals for the second floor space will be $1,900-$2,300, which includes all of the resources available to the nine businesses.
“It’s a commitment in terms of time and focus,” Faria said. “The whole idea is to make money.”
The center will also hold professional development seminars each month in which professionals will come in to address specific questions or issues brought up in the classes. A mentor team will also be established when the entrepreneurs move in. Two or three professionals will meet with individual businesses every two months to guide them and answer any concerns or address problems that might have arisen.
“One of the things clients will get in this center, more than anything, will be connections from the business world,” Faria said.
