Ohio’s Third Frontier Entrepreneurial Signature Program

Ohio’s Third Frontier Project

The Third Frontier Program represents the Ohio’s largest ever commitment to expanding the state’s
high-tech research capabilities, promoting technology commercialization and innovation, creating technology based businesses, and creating high paying jobs for generations to come. The ten-year, $1.6 billion State of Ohio initiative is designed to:

• Build world-class research facilities
• Support early stage capital formation and the development of new products
• Finance advanced manufacturing technologies to help existing industries become more productive

Entrepreneurial Signature Program

In June of 2006, the Third Frontier announced its Entrepreneurial Signature Program (ESP). The purpose of the ESP was to significantly increase the technology-based entrepreneurial commercialization outcomes throughout a defined regional geography and to focus the effort on strategic technology-based sectors that offer exceptional economic development prospects for the region. An ESP is intended to be a comprehensive, coordinated network of high value services that is visible and easily accessible to technology-based entrepreneurs and small tech-based companies throughout its region. For application for ESP funding, the state was divided into six regions (Northeast Ohio being one*), each able to apply for up to $15 million in funding for entrepreneurship, including a maximum of $6 million in pre-seed funding, with the balance going toward entrepreneurial initiatives.

Initiatives were required to:

• Significantly and visibly support technology entrepreneurs in the region, with particular emphasis on the signature technologies for the region
• Focus on those opportunities that represent the best economic development prospects
• Offer new programs and initiatives that do not support current operations and infrastructure

The objectives of the ESP grant were to significantly impact support for technology entrepreneurism in the region, however, its parameters limited funding to new programs and initiatives, as opposed to supporting any current operations. Northeast Ohio already had a solid entrepreneurial support base in groups like JumpStart, BioEnterprise, NEO Inc., as well as other incubators, new early stage funding sources, and newly engaged technology transfer offices at universities and institutions. Interestingly, the existence of this support base created a challenge for the Northeast Ohio team: create a comprehensive entrepreneurial support program that augmented, filled gaps, and worked collaboratively with the current and successful infrastructure.

As owner of the region’s technology agenda, NorTech was given this challenge and endeavored to design an entrepreneurial support program to take Northeast Ohio to a new level of technology entrepreneurism.

* Northeast Ohio’s ESP region is comprised of 21 counties (Ashland, Ashtabula, Carroll, Crawford, Columbiana, Cuyahoga, Erie, Geauga, Holmes, Huron, Lake, Lorain, Mahoning, Medina, Portage, Richland, Stark, Summit, Trumbull, Tuscarawas, and Wayne), nearly 40 percent of Ohio’s population.

TechLift is Northeast Ohio’s response to the ESP opportunity. Read more about the services provided by TechLift. 

We are focused on Northeast Ohio's signature technologies:

Advanced Materials, BioSciences, Electronics, Information Technology, Advanced Energy