CB Insights recently published a report that showed Ohio is #3 in the nation for providing grants to innovative, early-stage, scalable companies.
The graph above is from the report, which shows that Ohio's state government provided 14% of all grants awarded to support innovative companies and activities in the last five quarters.
While I am as cautious in general of large government funding programs as anybody these days, I'm also incredibly encouraged to see the state of Ohio's commitment, relative to other states, to encouraging more innovation and entrepreneurship.
It's not new news that Ohio's government leadership, on both the Republican and Democratic sides, have supported Ohio Third Frontier, Ohio's program to accelerate innovation in the state through research, technology commercialization, and entrepreneurship. JumpStart folks have blogged about Ohio Third Frontier in the past, including the results of the program to date (such as over 55,000 jobs and venture capital investment growing at more than twice the national rate.)
What is exciting and new is to see third party validation that the state's activity is one of the leaders in the country.
Seeing this relative leadership, it's less surprising that Ohio is now seeing results in private sector activity. According to the National Venture Capital Association and its MoneyTree data from Thomson Reuters, Ohio was a top 10 state for its volume of venture capital investments in 2009, up from a top quartile state in 2008 and lower than that in previous years. Of the client companies with which JumpStart works, some of them used some of this state grant funding for initial capital (or received an investment from JumpStart Ventures, also a recipient of Ohio Third Frontier grant funding) and then went on to raise risk capital afterwards. They were able to use state grants to develop their companies to the point at which they were in the range of acceptable risks for for-profit investors, and then secure that follow-on funding. They are great examples of how state dollars are being leveraged to generate private sector dollars and private sector jobs.
I'm somewhat familiar with the results of the Ben Franklin program in Pennsylvania and the results of organizations that have received Ben Franklin funding (such as Innovation Works). They are similarly impressive. So whatever your personal political position is relative to government programs, don't you want your state's entrepreneurs to be raising private sector dollars and creating jobs, no matter what was needed to spur that activity?
Cathy Belk is the Chief Marketing Officer of JumpStart. She specializes in branding, marketing communications, and business management. She brings 16+ years of experience in a variety of marketing and business roles, but gets her energy from working daily with entrepreneurs and their growing companies.