New Companies Find Home in WVU Incubator
Posted Thursday, April 5, 2007 ; 06:00 AM
Original Article
Intellectual property created at West Virginia University has potential to bring new jobs, income to the state.
Story by Pam Kasey
MORGANTOWN -- In a short three and one-half years, the West Virginia University Business Incubator has grown to offer services to 15 new companies.
Current tenants offer products and services as varied as sports databanks, steel drums, biometrics software and customized clothing.
Here's a sampling of three companies that are based on intellectual property created at WVU and that have strong potential for bringing new jobs and income to the state:
Choosy Kids
Far from what we might expect of technology transfer is Choosy Kids, the brainchild of Linda Carson, an associate professor in WVU's school of physical education.
Developed in the course of Carson's 37 years of work with children, the Choosy Kids program aims to teach young children to choose a healthy lifestyle.
Central to the program is Choosy, a huggable green character with a preference for nutritious foods and physical activity.
Choosy came about through focus groups.
"There was something to be learned about what has been successful in the past," Carson explained, referring to children's television characters like Barney and Big Bird. "It seemed like it was characters that had some texture to their skin, characters that had color and characters who were a little bit larger than life."
Carson's careful attention to children's responses soon may pay off in commercial success.
She invited Trev Hall to work with her several years ago and, with the help of WVU's office of technology transfer, the two formed Choosy Kids LLC last May to take the program to another level.
They were propelled onto the national stage when the National Head Start Association invited Choosy Kids to conduct a pilot program in its Region III.
"We've trained thousands of Head Start teachers," Hall said. "The pilot went so well that they decided to roll the whole program out nationally."
Online, Choosy Kids offers music CDs with embedded health messages, a training and parenting DVD and materials such as growth charts for classrooms and homes, Hall said. The company is looking ahead to developing training materials and possibly a certification that could be earned online.
When she first started out as a public school teacher in physical education, Carson said, she touched the lives of her students. As a teacher of teachers, her impact grew.
Now, through Choosy Kids, she said, "(What) it might take someone like me an entire career to build, in a business environment and with the assistance of an incubator like this we can do in a year."