Page 18 - Innovation Delaware 2018

“Delaware is a wonderful place to live. For the size of Wilmington, it has an amazing number of attractions and amenities — just amazing!” —Wills Elliman
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JEFF FETTERMAN JOHN RILEY
Additionally, he says, Delaware has a number of industry clusters in place, including “materials and advanced materials, which is more concentrated here than anywhere else,” he says. There is also a strong life-sciences cluster of companies, including those in agrichemicals and biomedicine. The number of major banks located in the state has also attracted a number of fintech startups.
Nor should it be forgotten that there still exists in Delaware a major chemicals business, not the least of which is Chemours, spun off by DuPont before the latter merged with Dow. DowDuPont itself still has a major presence here.
There also exist a number of organizations dedicated to fostering entrepreneurial innovation, including FSI and the newly formed Delaware Prosperity Partnership, whose goals are not only providing technical support, but also linking startups with angel investors and providing governmental incentive grants, including ones for foreign investors. FSI’s Angel Network consists of 230 investors, each of whom are able to write a minimum $25,000 investment check for a promising startup.
The Prosperity Partnership is committed not only to amassing data and network support, but also is finding ways to disseminate the information to companies and individuals, according to JOHN RILEY, who was tasked with getting the organization off the ground. (William
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WILLS ELLIMAN
Kurt Foreman has since become the Prosperity Partnership’s CEO.) “We are developing a major informational website, are utilizing social media, including advertising, and will be staging road shows and attending conferences,” Riley says.
One sure sign that Delaware already has attracted a cadre of small entrepreneurs and participants in the gig economy is the large number of co- working spaces, especially in Wilmington and its suburbs, which offer everything from a desk to a suite of offices. Additionally, for those who prefer living in an urban environment, local builders have recently constructed almost 1,000 apartments, condos and residences in Wilmington’s downtown area as well as in its trendy near-in neighborhoods such as the Riverfront and Trolley Square. Wilmington has suffered from the impression that no one lives downtown or journeys there in the evenings, says its mayor, Mike Purzycki, “but we are changing that.”
Two driving forces behind Delaware’s robust business environment are business-friendly state and local governments and technology-supporting universities, including the University of Delaware’s STAR Campus, which melds educational initiatives with onsite business development. Delaware Technical Community College is a leader in providing advanced job training and re-training.
WILMINGTON
“We got tremendous local support when we started,” says Paula Swain, executive vice president of human resources at Incyte, a fast-growing pharmaceutical company that recently expanded its campus north of Wilmington. “In fact, [local governments] helped us discover this space. We’ve always had great support from the mayor and the governor.”
But WILLS ELLIMAN, senior managing director of Newmark Knight Frank commercial real estate brokerage, says the first thing he tells potential clients is not about the business atmosphere, but the location. “Delaware is a wonderful place to live,” he says. “For the size of Wilmington, it has an amazing number of attractions and amenities — just amazing!”
Northern Delaware has great geographic logistics for business — an
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