Paterson’s Option to Incubate: Business Incubating Analysis and Economic Stability

Abstract

Despite being the third most populous city in New Jersey, Paterson with nearly 30% of residents’ income below the poverty level, Paterson needs immediate economic growth and renewal. This becomes more essential with current covid-19 situation. Strategies need to be discussed about how to better help business owners survive.

Business incubators provide services such as shared office-space, business training/mentoring assistance, links to capital, IP and social networks. We are trying to explore factors that will help to contribute to success of local business community.

To conduct this study all business data of Paterson from 2015-2018 was collected and reviewed focusing on the SIC data sourced from Info USA. It should be noted, Paterson is unique with numerous zip codes areas, lack of business resources/education due to small size needs to be improved in the future.

The Paterson, NJ economic data analyzed, found several factors contributing to the local business success, (e.g., credit score and white-collar percentage contributed positively to the success of business sales volume.)

Our analysis suggests, local government need to implement business incubator (BI) according to the feature of each zip code. We suggest different types of BI for individual zip codes, setting up smaller sized incubators will help Paterson local business owners with better training in capital investment, technology skills development, legal education and others. Lastly, BI will help the local community grow in a mutual business environment with an anticipated higher success rate.

Keywords: Business Incubator, Paterson NJ