September 4, 2014
Cedar Falls, IA – The partnership between the University of Northern Iowa and Advance Iowa is strong, allowing for Advance Iowa to be extremely successful in the past year. As Advance Iowa enters its second full year of assisting midsized businesses across the State, they are gaining more attention not only from business but also from the economic development world.
Advance Iowa is assisting midsized businesses as a consulting tool while provide strategic review and coaching. UNI offers access to databases which help provide research for companies as part of their engagement with Advance Iowa.
Providing these midsized or second-stage businesses with information that in turn is helping them grow is top priority for UNI as well as the State of Iowa and Iowa Economic Development Authority. Research conducted by the Edward Lowe Foundation has provided further support that these second-stage business are the job creators in our economy, “…between 1995 and 2012, second-stage companies only represented 11.6 percent of U.S. establishments, but generated nearly 34 percent of jobs and about 34.5 percent of sales.” Advance Iowa hopes to accentuate this within the State of Iowa. Randy Pilkington, Executive Director of Business & Community Services at the University of Northern Iowa states, “Advance Iowa is probably the most efficient way to work in economic development.”
Steve Dust, CEO and President of the Greater Cedar Valley Alliance & Chamber in Waterloo has also recognized the efforts of Advance Iowa, “Without Advance Iowa we wouldn’t have the access or the ability to deliver to the kind of services that we can through Advance Iowa.” Businesses are praising Advance Iowa as well. One-hundred year old Sterzings’, most known for their classic potato chips, CEO Craig Smith said of their engagement, “As a mature business we had not looked into the strategic advantage that social media could play in our overall marketing scheme. Advance Iowa’s strategic team presented
several opportunities to us and helped us strategize a new way to promote our product in venues that we had never explored before.”
If you have any interested in taking advantage of the services offered by Advance Iowa email, info@advanceiowa.com and for additional information see http://AdvanceIowa.com.