Development

The focus of the development phase will be on commercialization efforts -- establishing a local business and entrepreneurial environment conducive to company formation and successful start-up centered around the intellectual property developed at or in partnership with the University of South Carolina. Activities in this phase will include the following:

• Creating a comprehensive package of incentives and benefits to support new company formation in the fuel cell space (e.g., incubator space, professional services, access to graduate research assistants, etc.);
• Providing incentives to support student start-up businesses;
• Developing tailored "recruitment" incentives to attract landing parties from established companies to transform their in-house, but currently undeveloped intellectual property into new business units; and
• Leveraging public and private sources of venture capital assistance for qualified energy-related businesses