The report, “Research to Renewal: Advancing University Tech Transfer,” was produced by Heartland Forward, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that describes itself as a “think and do tank focused on improving economic performance in the center of the United States.” It evaluated American universities based on their success at infusing discoveries into private industry to yield an economic return.

The metrics included invention disclosures; number of licenses and options; licensing income and startups formed; citations of university articles contained in patents granted to firms; and relative number of STEM graduates.

UF Innovate is saying goodbye to the man who wrote the book on business incubation. Mark Long, the author of several such books, has directed UF Innovate’s two business incubators, Sid Martin Biotech and The Hub, since January 2016. He will retire on June 30.

“Mark’s positive, ‘get stuff done’ attitude – along with his customer-service approach – has kept both facilities at 100 percent occupancy and made the program ‘the hub’ for entrepreneurship in North Central Florida it was intended to be,” said Jim O’Connell, assistant vice president of commercialization for the University of Florida and leader of UF Innovate. “He has been a unifying force in the local community and a literal ‘standing on top of the desk’ cheerleader for 3^rd Thursdays at The Hub.”

The goal of business incubation

Like the monthly networking gathering for entrepreneurs hosted by The Hub, the goal of the incubation programs has been to benefit the entire entrepreneurial ecosystem in Alachua County, not just provide a better chance of success for resident client companies. (The more than 230 alumni companies have demonstrated an 84 percent success rate.) Startups that graduate often remain in the area and contribute to the local and state economies. The entrepreneurs who lead them become integral to the innovation community in Alachua and Gainesville.

“We’ve had some good graduates,” Long said. “You don’t often get a company like Lacerta that not only graduates in less than two years but builds their own building, in this community. But that’s one piece of direct evidence of jobs created new tax revenue, new employment, new companies to the area.

“That’s the real function of incubators,” he said. “We’re supposed to create what most people call ‘churn.’ Companies coming in with one or two people, then growing under the mentoring, advisement, networking, love, care and feeding of the incubator. And then they get to the point where they’re large enough to move out and establish their own presence, renting or building in the area.”

With State of Florida and USDA funds, UF established its first incubator, Sid Martin Biotech, in Progress Park in Alachua in 1995. The Hub, located in between UF and downtown Gainesville, opened in 2011. The award-winning programs provide clients 130,000 square feet in labs, offices, and conference rooms plus $1.5 million in shared biomedical equipment.  

Under Long’s leadership, the facilities have both won international awards in incubation from the International Business Incubation Association. The InBIA has named Sid Martin best global incubator three times, twice with Long at the helm. The Hub received the award for best mixed-use incubation program.   

“Mark is leaving Sid Martin and The Hub with a culture of execution and contract. We do what we say; we get things done,” said Elliott Welker, interim assistant director at the biotech incubator. “Most incubators in the U.S. have policies inspired by Mark. He has changed how business incubation is practiced in this country for the better.”

Recruiting quality companies

When Long became director of Sid Martin Biotech 5 ½ years ago, one company, Syngenta, took up more than half the building. Of course, this worried the new director.

“Everybody said, ‘Don’t worry! They renew every year,’” Long remembered. “Six weeks after I started, the guy that ran Syngenta came to my office and said, ‘We just let everybody go. We’re closing down this division. Here’s your check for our last two months.’”

And with that brief conversation, Sid Martin was 66 percent empty. Long and former Assistant Director Merrie Shaw, who had worked at the facility for more than a decade at that point, embraced the idea that “one person’s problem is another person’s opportunity,” as Long termed it. The pair worked together to fill the building with quality companies.

“If you’ve got a life science company, this is an award-winning program. This is the place to be,” the two messaged to investors and potential clients. By late summer, the building was at 95 percent occupancy. It has had a waiting list of companies ever since.

In September of 2017, another brief conversation, this time with Dr. David Norton, vice president of UF Research, put Long in charge of a second business incubator, The Hub. He would become the “director of incubation services,” directing both Sid Martin and The Hub. The newer, mixed-use incubator was on the verge of doubling in size, and, much as he had inherited a largely empty building in Alachua, Long inherited a new building, completely empty.  

“So this became the adventure of being the interim director of The Hub and Sid Martin,” Long said, “which by November of 2017 morphed into the permanent director of incubation services. It was a great opportunity to streamline operations and have reciprocity between the two facilities.”

When the second half of The Hub opened in January 2018, Long and his team were ready to get the building filled with quality candidates.

The beginning of ‘get stuff done’

“We shifted into high gear,” he continued. “We started the motto of ‘getting stuff done’ and focused on doing just that. I focused my efforts on recruitment, retention, and education of the clients. Many of them didn’t know where to find money or how to pitch or how to talk to investors.”

By December 2018, less than a year after opening The Hub Building II, the building was at capacity.

Long credits his success to his team, both those he led and those who led him.

“My management, Jim O’Connell as the assistant VP of commercialization at UF Innovate and Dr. David Norton as VP of research, are smart in how they manage people,” he said. “They realized I knew what I was doing, and they just made sure I had a clear path to success and let me achieve it – with the hard efforts of the staff, the volunteer efforts of the Advisory Board, and with all the amenities UF Innovate had to offer.

“We have every facet of entrepreneurial support that people would require, so we took off, we did well, we filled The Hub. We had a good time doing it. You know, somebody once said ‘If work was fun, it wouldn’t be called work, it would be called fun.’ But it has been fun.”

Teamwork did make the dream work

The Hub’s interim assistant director Jennifer Harrell agreed.

“We have had a fantastic journey over the past few years, and through it all, we never stopped laughing, having fun, or ‘GSD’-ing,” Harrell said. “As Mark says, you do not just get ‘GSD’ swag; you earn it. And that we did, with Mark alongside us every step of the way.”

Long is retiring to what he calls a three-page “honey do” list his wife of 42 years has crafted for him, but he has promised to serve on the incubator’s advisory boards and return for the area’s premiere networking event, 3^rd Thursday at The Hub, each month.

Welker points to the vast area surrounding Sid Martin Biotech populated with companies such as Ology Bioservices, Lacerta Therapeutics, AGTC, all expanding into new, additional buildings in Alachua. These and numerous other companies that got their start at the biotech incubator. He knows that companies incubated at The Hub will change the face of the Gainesville Innovation District in the near future as well.

“Mark is always willing to share his wealth of knowledge, experience, triumphs, and failures with the rest of us, and you can see what he’s accomplished,” Welker said. “I look forward to seeing his influence continue to compound in the coming years.”

By Sara Dagen, marketing & communications manager, UF Innovate 

“We’re definitely joining a much bigger ecosystem, and we’re really excited about that,” said Shadow Health Co-Founder and CEO David Massias. “If we go back to our biggest goals – better trained nurses, improved global patient outcomes, and the highest performing teams possible – we can go farther and get there faster as a part of a tremendous global organization than we ever could going alone.”

Shadow Health is an educational technology startup bridging the “academic to practice skills” gap in health care by providing rich, interactive, digital learning environments for nursing and allied health education programs. The company uses virtual patients that communicate with nursing students who interact with the patient much as they would in a clinical situation. The global pandemic has increased the need for the lifelike interactions Shadow Health offers with a diverse range of virtual patients.

“It’s great to see the hard work of one of our UF faculty, Ben Lok, reach the market in a very impactful way,” said Jim O’Connell, assistant vice president of technology commercialization at UF. “It’s also an example of how long it takes for university-stage technology to find traction and why universities need to support their startups, often for very extended periods of time.”

Since its commercial launch in 2011, the startup has grown from a company of 2 to a team of 150, most based in Gainesville. The company was one of the first resident clients in UF Innovate | The Hub. Elsevier has close to 10,000 employees, and RELX has multiples of that.

“Shadow Health’s purpose is to accelerate global health. We’ve been working steadily – and successfully – toward that goal for almost 10 years now,” Massias said. “In our first year we had a total of 3 nursing schools, this year we’ll serve 900. We started with a few hundred nursing students. This year, we’ll serve close to 200,000. So things have been going well, but becoming a part of Elsevier means we can get to our goal even faster and as part of a much larger team committed to our same vision, mission, and values.”

UF researchers began with a single question: “Can talking to a virtual human help you get better at talking with real humans?”

The company’s patented digital patient technology came from a team of researchers in human-centered computing in UF’s Department of Computer & Information Science & Engineering that included Shadow Health co-founders Benjamin Lok and Aaron Kotranza. Their natural language processor-based technology addresses communication gaps nursing students often experienced in the transition from school to a clinical practice setting.

“We help train students to ask that one more critical question, display empathy and educate the patient at the right time,” Lok said.

Elsevier also works with healthcare educators to prepare students for careers in medicine, nursing and health professions. The acquisition advances both companies in their goal to provide the best in conversation-based learning to improve health professionals’ communications skills and clinical judgment.

“I’m very excited to share that every Shadow Health employee was invited to join Elsevier as a part of the acquisition,” Massias said. “Even more exciting is that Elsevier is not only committed to Shadow Health staying in Gainesville, but we’re actively working on plans to grow here. They see Gainesville like we do – a great place to live and work and build teams and companies that want to change the world.”

Shadow Health continues to build, test, and ship its next simulation projects but is also scaling up because of new resources that are part of joining Elsevier.

“We’ve had an African proverb above our door for years now which sums it up: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together,’” Massias said. “With Elsevier and the ability to train more nurses, reach more global markets, and provide our people with professional opportunities worldwide, we really are better together.”

By Sara Dagen, marketing & communications manager, UF Innovate