An engine of innovation – The Nebraska Business Development Center

Connecting the dots on grant proposals. Helping secure professional training. Networking. Loan packaging. Getting businesses up and running from little more than an idea and rough business plan.

Those are run-of-the-mill tasks for the Nebraska Business Development Center http://nbdc.unomaha.edu/ , which helps thousands of Nebraska businesses each year with those issues and others.

The numbers show that each year, the center is expanding its influence slowly, methodically and organically.

Consider this: In 2009, the development center recorded an overall "impact" — a measure of all lending, job creation, investments and sales by the businesses it helps, among other factors — of $324 million. In 2010, that number grew to $420 million.

By Ross Boettcher
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITER

Full Story: http://www.omaha.com/article/20111114/MONEY/711149961