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Helping Lead the Way Toward Kentucky's High-Tech Future
Authorized by the Kentucky Innovation Act, the Cabinet for
Economic Development's Department of Commercialization and Innovation (DCI),
under Commissioner Deborah Clayton, has been charged with leading the state's
new economy efforts. By building and promoting technology-driven and
research-intensive industries, the Cabinet works through DCI to create
high-tech job opportunities and develop clusters of innovation throughout the
state.
With a strong focus on accountability and return on taxpayer
investments, DCI's mission includes recruiting, creating, and retaining
high-tech companies and jobs, producing new products and services, and
developing new and improved processes.
Based on existing studies of Kentucky's scientific and economic
resources, DCI's efforts to recruit new and established businesses are focused
primarily on the following areas of research and development: Human Health and
Development; Biosciences; Information Technology and Communications;
Environmental and Energy Technology; and Materials Science and Advanced
Manufacturing.
Developing a World-Class Infrastructure and Economy
The Kentucky Innovation Act created various mechanisms to
provide pre-seed and seed-stage funding to help develop promising technologies.
DCI administers two high-tech funding pools: (1) the High-Tech Investment Pool,
used to provide grants and loans for use in building and promoting networks or
clusters of high-tech industries, and (2) the High-Tech Construction Fund, used
for grants and loans to create high-tech and knowledge-based companies and
their equipment and facilities. In addition, DCI works with Commonwealth
Seed Capital, LLC, a group established by the Kentucky Economic Development
Partnership Board, to provide early-stage seed funds that facilitate the
commercialization of innovative ideas and technologies developed in
Kentucky. Proposals from qualified parties seeking funding to start or
expand high-tech businesses and organizations within the Commonwealth will be
solicited annually by the Department of Commercialization and Innovation.
Working at the Local Level - Statewide
Kentucky's regional Innovation and Commercialization Center
(ICC) program provides a cohesive, statewide framework to support
business-building and funding efforts at the local level. A total of six
ICC's and seven Innovation Centers (IC's) across the state operate to increase
the quality of investments flowing to knowledge-based firms throughout
Kentucky. The program also works to increase statewide knowledge of
entrepreneurship, start-up processes, and investment practices, while providing
value-added services to existing businesses, start-ups, and the investment
community. The ICC/IC program helps increase the likelihood that
high-tech businesses can form locally and find private or other external
funding. In 2005, over 40 percent of 185 ICC companies had received investment
funding as a direct result of the efforts of their local ICC staffs.
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