RIT and Finger Lakes Wired Promote Growth in Local Companies

The E. Philip Saunders College of Business at Rochester Institute of Technology and Finger Lakes Wired announce the establishment of an innovative new 10-week program, Creating and Leading Strategic Growth, which begins Oct. 1. The workshop-style training and mentoring program, which targets high potential regional small- and medium-sized companies, is designed to analyze market opportunities and develop a strategic growth and customized-implementation plan for each business.

The Strategic Growth program at Saunders College of Business is sponsored by Finger LakesWired. Finger Lakes Wired is working with RIT and other partners to increase entrepreneurship and innovation and expand advance opportunities for workers throughout the region.

“We have 17 business teams enrolled in the program, and not only will they learn practical business strategies for company-specific growth initiatives, we will mesh it with our Saunders mission, which is to help small companies commercialize technology,” says Richard DeMartino, RIT associate professor of management and director of the Albert J. Simone Center for Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

“One of the characteristics of these companies is that innovation has to be part of the solution for business growth and they have to have an existing strategy of where they are,” DeMartino explains. “In essence, the program will be a realization process for these businesses, and the beauty of it is that we don’t do the work for them. They do it for themselves.”

For more information on the Creating and Leading Strategic Growth program, contact the E. Philip Saunders College of Business Executive Education office at (585) 475-7435 or visit www.ritemba.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: Finger Lakes Wired is one of 13 designated Wired regions in the country funded by the U. S. Department of Labor Wired (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) Initiative to support economic development and transform regional economies. Finger Lakes Wired initiatives focus on a nine-county region surrounding Rochester, N.Y., to increase entrepreneurship and innovation, expand employment, advance opportunities for workers, and enhance the talent of the workforce through the creation of high-skill and high-wage opportunities.