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Business Incubator in Peoria Turns 10

Peoria Public Radio

The Peoria NEXT Innovation Center is celebrating its tenth anniversary. The med-tech business incubator has helped launch or support more than 40 different entrepreneurial endeavors over the last decade.

“There’s some that are still out there, other ones, unfortunately just like any business we have failures. But that doesn’t mean that we don’t keep on trying,” Ross Miller, Director of Technology Commercialization for the Illinois Small Business Development Center at Bradley University, said. 

BU operates the Innovation Center. He says Peoria NEXT can house more than 20 start-ups at a time.

“Right now we have 14 different companies that are in here. But some of those rent more than one office space or more than one wet-lab or a combination of the two. So right now we are at about 70-percent capacity,” Miller said. 

Miller says they would welcome new start-up businesses to fill the space. The average start-up tech business spends two to four years in the incubator before they graduate or dissolve. Peoria NEXT has helped launch five successful businesses.

The two most recent were Peoria NEXT successful business graduates are Intellihot and ONEFIRE.