Entrepreneurship Center’s director practiced what he teaches

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By Lynn Thompson | Saturday, October 13, 2007 12:03 AM CDT | () comments

An Illinois business development center created as part of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s “Opportunity Returns” campaign is fast becoming a catalyst for successful entrepreneurs in the Quad-City region.

The Northwest Regional Entrepreneurship Center in Rock Island was started in October 2004 primarily to promote small business development in the Quad-City regional counties of Rock Island, Henry, Mercer and Whiteside, along with Bureau, Carroll, Jo Daviess, LaSalle, Lee and Putnam counties.

The driving force behind the center is its director, Don Henry, who built the agency “from scratch” to serve as a one-stop resource for small businesses.

“Our situation is unique in that each EC (entrepreneurship center) has the freedom to facilitate entrepreneurial business development that meets the needs of both its region and its entrepreneurs,” he said. “So each case is totally

different.”

Henry said that the Rock Island-based agency can assist individuals who want to start a new company as well as existing businesses up to 500 employees. In both cases, key criteria must be met to qualify for services.

The business plan must demonstrate a realistic potential for continuous and rapid growth, and the company must possess an innovation in a product or in their operations that will create growth in a sustainable manner long term.

“Entrepreneurs are, by nature, optimists, and their business projections tend to be too optimistic in relation to the reality of starting up a rapid growth company,” Henry said. “It is very easy to start a business, but it is much more difficult to nurture it and keep it growing.

“Entrepreneurs are not always able to successfully delegate responsibility. You know the old adage about hiring people who are smarter in their field than yourself? I am a classic case of that and firmly believe in that as a business model.”

Henry is a self-described “accidental entrepreneur” who holds more than two dozen patents. While in college in the 1960s, he changed schools and majors after realizing that his first major was not his forté.

“I attended Augustana to become a chemical engineer. Then in my second year, I discovered how long the chemical formulas were in organic chemistry,” he said. “I was never good at memorization so I realized that I needed to make a change. I transferred to the University of Illinois and graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering.”

After college, Henry joined Quad-City manufacturer Eagle Signal Co. as an engineer. There, he said, he was given the unique opportunity of working on electronic projects from conception to production. It was during that process that he began receiving patents for his innovations in electronic technology.

When Eagle Signal was bought out, Henry, three other engineers and a salesman decided to start their own company. “It was not as easy in 1967 as it is today,” he said. “We had no money or financial resources to build a business. And no one understood high tech or electronics yet.”

The four men soon partnered with Struthers-Dunn, Inc., an East Coast business that wanted to excel in electronics. Henry and his team set up shop in an old two-story house in Bettendorf to design and sell custom industrial control systems.

Henry’s moment of glory came one day while presenting a new product to Ford Motor Company’s manufacturing engineers. “The supervisor said they didn’t need any of our stuff,” Henry said. “Instead he was looking for someone to design an all electronic, solid-state resistance weld control that made 100 percent good welds for all of their metal stamping lines.”

Henry said that Ford’s existing suppliers maintained it could not be done. But without knowing anything about resistance welding, Henry told Ford that his company could produce it. After extensive research and funding from Struthers-Dunn, Henry gave Ford its first prototype within a year.

“Ford gave us a million dollar order, and from that day in 1972 until the early 1990s, we were the sole supplier of weld control systems for Ford’s metal stamping operations across the country,” Henry said.

He would go on to develop and tailor programmable control systems unique to specific manufacturing processes. In 1987, he founded Uticor Technology, selling electronic innovations to a worldwide market.

“The patents were simply a result of the rapid growth of technology in a very competitive environment,” Henry said. “Patents were the protection required to play the game, nothing magic. They simply resulted from finding a unique solution for customer problems and then turning it into a generally useful item.”

It is that type of innovation that Henry solicits from entrepreneurs who are seeking help from the Northwest Region Entrepreneurship Center. Henry said clients are initially referred to the center’s Web site to review service and grant requirements.

If the client determines that he or she qualifies for assistance, Henry meets with them at a location of their choosing. “It is usually at their home or their local coffee shop if they are not in operation yet or at their business,” Henry said. “I do this so that I can see if they have the passion necessary to carry them through the rough spots and to get a true feeling of their environment and personality.”

Once Henry and the client have discussed and brainstormed ideas, he usually is able to assess any potential for sustainable growth.

He also determines if the client needs additional resources from the Illinois Entrepreneur Network before proceeding to the final application process. He said that depending on how much help the client needs, the process can take months to complete.

The center coordinates services with several agencies including the Small Business Development Center Network, the Illinois Technology Enterprise Center Network and the Manufacturing Extension Center Network. Northwest Region Entrepreneurship Center also works with the New Ventures Center in downtown Davenport as well as chambers of commerce, economic development groups and other business partners across northwest Illinois.

Since its inception, the agency has counseled nearly 100 businesses and awarded more than $340,000 in challenge grants to more than 50 entrepreneurs.

Jan Masamoto, president of JTM Concepts, utilized the center’s matching grant process to fund copyright protection for the Rock Island company’s successful “Classroom3,” better known as Classroom Cubed, virtual reality education programs. “As a small business, the EC was a great resource for us in raising the money to obtain copyrights for our unique 3-D simulation programs,” she said.

Marc Pichik is president of The Creative Frontier in Galena, Ill. His company created the “Retract-A-Gate,” a retractable safety gate for children and pets that can be used indoors or outdoors.

“With help from the EC’s resources, we received grants to help us market our product,” Pichik said. “The center also connected us with consultants who have helped us lean down our manufacturing process and look at various facility designs and layouts to maximize our growth and potential.”

Henry said that along with creativity, flexibility and an innovative product, a good working environment is essential for a successful business. “Along with a great inventor, a business also needs someone who is at the same time very creative in the other aspects of the business and in working with people,” he said.

“I have over 25 patents, but I am not a great inventor like Edison. I am much more proud of the businesses that I helped create and, more important, the environment in that business. I believe that all of my past business associates will remember me for me rather than the number of patents.”

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