Growth

The Small Business Center (SBC) is dedicated to the training of potential and existing small business owners. Training sessions are offered as free seminars as well as customized individual business training events. The Small Business Center offers more than 125 free seminars each year on various business topics including: Financing, Management, Marketing, and Accounting/Record Keeping. The SBC also offers free, confidential one-on-one business consulting services to assist you in the daily operation of your business. These services can include: a Financial Analysis of Your Company, Market and Industry Research, Loan Packages, Business Plans, Marketing Plans, and Strategic Planning.

The Office of Economic Development works with citizens, neighborhood groups, business and property owners, local commissions and organizations, and elected officials to revitalize and preserve Greenville’s Center City and surrounding neighborhoods.

Fostering the development of technology-based businesses, the Technology Enterprise Center offers office, laboratory, and light manufacturing space to technology-based companies on a short-term lease basis. If you are a technology-based company and wish to discuss leasing space, contact Brad Hufford at (252) 902-2077, brad.hufford@pittcountync.gov.

The North Carolina Biotechnology Center understands the importance of emerging entrepreneurial companies to the state’s biotechnology industry. Through the Business and Technology Development Program, the Center awards low-interest loans to promising emerging life science companies across the state. These loans are designed to help recipients meet meaningful research and commercial milestones.

CED is its network. A broad, dynamic array of entrepreneurs, investors, strategic partners, service providers, academics and researchers feed the entrepreneurial success CED has fostered for more than three decades. Their stories are our stories. With their help, CED has become one of the most powerful networks for entrepreneurs in the US.

ECU’s Office of Innovation and Economic Development (OIED) delivers and supports regional transformation by fostering community enhancement & regional development, a regional innovation workforce, cluster-based economic development, and the proliferation of innovation, entrepreneurship and small business.

Mark Phillips is responsible for directing and promoting biotechnology-related growth and development activities for the Biotechnology Center’s Eastern Office in Greenville. Phillips serves as the regions’ contact to the Biotechnology Center’s grant and loan funding programs, while working with companies, schools and institutions throughout a 27-county region to strengthen biotechnology research, business, education and workforce training, and to identify new opportunities for commercial biotechnology

The Minority and Women Business Enterprise (MWBE) Program is a joint venture launched by the City of Greenville and Greenville Utilities (the City’s public utilities) to provide minority and women-owned firms an equal opportunity to do business with the City and GUC. The MWBE program offers one-on-one mentoring to coach firms on how to best position themselves for success in government contracting. The MWBE Program also provides training opportunities on a variety of topics, including “How to Submit Responsive Bids,” “Certification Made Easy,” and “Understanding Local Preference.” In the Fall and Spring, the MWBE Program hosts events to directly connect firms with government purchasers and to provide marketing and promotion of MWBE firms to the larger Greenville community. Visit our website to search our directory of local, state, and federal government opportunities.

NCBiotech research grant programs are designed to encourage innovation, support university infrastructure and help move technology toward commercialization. In addition, our grants fill in some critical funding gaps, stages where it is typically difficult to find funding.