GRAND RAPIDS ? Carol Lopucki, State Director of the Michigan Small Business and Technology Development Center, sat down with Mitechnews.Com Editor Mike Brennan to explain how her program can help Michigan businesses grow.

The SBA-funded program is based at Grand Valley State University?s downtown Grand Rapids campus, but has divided the state into 12 regions that served some 10,000 businesses in 2004, including about 1,200 involved in technology.

The full Q&A follows:

Q: What is the MSBTDC?

A: Is an SBA program. There are state headquarters in all 50 states that get an allocation of dollars. In Michigan, we get $2.7 million from the SBA. As state director, I have to match that dollar for dollar. So we?re running about a $6 million program that delivers no cost counsel, no cost training and market research for small businesses. Typically our companies are new launches, they are existing companies typically up to 15 employees and then they reach a sophistication level where they?re healthy enough to use private sector funds. We see a few of them larger than that, typically from a parent to an off spring, we watch them from launch through growth and development.

We start with young companies and help them get the basic baseline business education training classes and then one on one counsel to help them through the legal aspects, how they put their identify together, how to build their business plans, how to develop their marketing strategy, how to put their financial package together to go to the bank, the whole bailiwicks for people who start a business and don?t know what they don?t know. We get every company coming through the door. The retailers, the manufacturers, the service oriented companies. We also have another market we deal with, technology based companies. The SBTDC plays a significant role in seeding tech based companies.

Q: How do you help tech companies?

A: What we do is in direct affiliation with our traditional services. They still need financials, they still need help to put their business plans together, and they still need to build a business identity. The smartest of scientists can walk in the door and have a biomed innovation process that?s going to change the world but they?ve still got intellectual property, they?ve still got building the business around it not just sitting in the laboratory. We see ourselves as the business partner of the scientist, the engineer, the physicist, the innovator. We see the same levels of sophistication in technology companies we see in traditional businesses.

So if you put the main street up one side against it you can put someone who comes in and has innovation and needs baseline help on where do I go with it. You move up to that next level of sophistication, you?ve got somebody with their intellectual property protected already, but now they need to take it to the next step, often times getting access to capital getting the kinds of strategic alliances they need to build a business and to put together a business model. And then we get sophisticated folks out there who are doing business who are looking for growth and partners through SBIR grants, connectivity with the procurement system, contracting with the federal government, so they need a different level of expertise from us. So we have counselors who are generalists at the basic level, we have advanced counselors at the traditional level; we have technology counselors who have specialties in key areas.

Q: If you look at the total population of your clients, how many come from the technology sector?

A: We served 10,000 companies last year, and about 1,200 were innovators of one kind or another. Innovation is something with intellectual property to it.

Q: Which would be your big success stories?

A: CeeTox would be one, a Pfizer spin out. All the companies in the Innovation Center would be examples in our portfolio. We?ve been engaged with them from the start when they got their first funding from the state. SageStone and its growth into NuSoft that would be a company that used our advanced tools for strategic partnering. We?ve been part of that company since Keith Brophy?s basement days. Our counselor, the MBA in the North region, is finding agricultural innovations. He?s got some US FDA SBIR submissions he?s put in. He?s got many small manufacturers looking at innovative processes that might be advantageous to the Tool & Die industry, so he?s got some very unique things. We?ve run the gamut of energy related, like Sordal, which just spread its wings and flew from the West Michigan Smart Zone. A lot of our people are engaged as well in the Ann Arbor office. We?re very engaged with the small manufacturers engaged with Automation Alley, or Life Science and IT stuff coming out of our Ann Arbor area.

Q: Let?s talk about your counselors. How many do you have now?

A: We have four full time and three part time. Just walking through geographic details, we distributed them around the state. Anna Bier in Southeast Michigan is our specialist who works in the area of SBIR and SBTTR federal grants. She put in over 40 submissions in the past year. Often times they come to us without all the partners, the PhD, the primary investigators, we help in that process and make sure it is crystal clean before it is submitted.

Our consultants include:

Anna Bier a specialist in SBIR and STTR grants;

Mary Sue Hoffman, Intellectual Property;

Gary Walker, Advanced Manufacturing;

Phil Tepley: Advanced Manufacturing, Product Commercialization and Matchmaking;

Paula Rhoades, Marketing;

Chris Chamberlain, SBIR Research;

Dick Pilcher, Biotech;

Sean Ainsworth, Bio Med and Life Sciences.

Q: How many offices do you have?

A: 12 regional and 35 satellite offices. There?s a host institution, with a regional director. Dollar allocation goes to these twelve. They develop a strategic plan. The Innovation Center (Kalamazoo) is our tightest relationship.

For more information, click on MISBTDC.Org