BUSINESS GATEWAY HELPS COMPANIES TAP INTO UNIVERSITY RESOURCES
A fruitful business relationship started simply when a local company needed some help. KITCO Fiber Optics was informed by one of its customers, a Fortune 50 company based in Texas, that in order to continue to do business with that company, KITCO would need to meet ISO (International Organization for Standardization) standards for future contracts.
"At the time we were not an ISO company," said Geoff Clark, the KITCO Fiber Optics president and CEO. "Finding out we were going to be eliminated as a supplier if we didn't do something, my team and I came back and did some research. As a result we found ODU and Jerry."
"Jerry" is Jerry Robertson, associate vice president and executive director of Old Dominion University's Business Gateway.
That initial help was given to KITCO six years ago. Relationships that Clark and his company formed with ODU experts have since led to other opportunities in lean manufacturing and consulting on Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants. Over this period of time, KITCO has become a leading provider of fiber optic products and services to the military and commercial communications industry from its headquarters in Virginia Beach.
Now that Old Dominion has created the Business Gateway, the hope is that success stories like KITCO's are repeated. Business Gateway is designed to be a two-way portal, bringing the entire expertise of the university to bear as an asset to the local business community, Robertson said.
The biggest problem small businesses face is that resources just aren't available to them, Miller said. "And I don't mean to suggest that large businesses have unlimited budgets, because they don't. But small businesses, in particular, are resource constrained particularly when it comes to people and capital.
A local asset like ODU has had a significant impact on us. Without Jerry and his team we wouldn't have been able to have done what we did in the time we had.
"I think, as we consider to expand and grow our business, we're going to continue to see new things, new opportunities that we might not have the answer for right away. But it's great to know we can pick up the phone and call Jerry."