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Helping Existing Businesses and Launching New Ventures

By offering programs that enhance, educate and accelerate growth of local businesses and organizations, the School of Management has contributed significantly to regional economic growth.

• The Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership 

  Since its inception in 1987, the School of Management’s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership (CEL) has helped advance the talents of hundreds of business owners and operators through a variety of executive education programs. By helping firms grow, CEL indirectly helps increase employment levels, expands the flow of resources into the economy, and strengthens the tax base of the Western New York community. CEL’s Core Program is unique in matching participants with successful business people to mentor participants, helping them grow their businesses and overcome problems. Including the Class of 2007, a total of 550 business owners and operators representing approximately 20,000 jobs in WNY and 2.5 billion in revenues to the local economy have completed the CEL Core Program.

• Advanced CEL 

  Business owners and leaders are currently operating in a highly unpredictable atmosphere with increased importance on being able to ‘lead entrepreneurially’. With the rate of change in business climates and increased competition, traditional and conventional approaches to management are not enough. At the request of the CEL Core Program graduates, the Advanced CEL Program was developed in 2006 to provide the initiative to respond to these ongoing business challenges. Because entrepreneurs face unique challenges, Advanced CEL, provides a forum for business owners and leaders to be surrounded by others with similar experiences. Where the CEL CORE Program was founded on the principles of exploring challenges and opportunities of an entrepreneur’s business, the CEL Advanced program (ACEL) will build upon the success of the CORE Program and provide a forum to continue this success through an array of learning opportunities.

• Allstate Minority and Women Emerging Entrepreneurs Program 

  The Allstate Minority and Women Emerging Entrepreneurs Program is a joint venture by the UB School of Management‘s Center for Entrepreneurial Leadership and the UB Center for Urban Studies. The program’s mission is to construct a pathway that enables minority and women entrepreneurs to move their companies to the next stage of development. Creating opportunities for minority and women entrepreneurs to bolster the development of their companies will strengthen the economy of the Buffalo-Niagara Frontier. Since its inception in 2004, 75 minority and women entrepreneurs have completed the program.

• The Henry A. Panasci Jr. Technology Entrepreneurship Competition (Panasci TEC) 

  Panasci TEC was created by the UB School of Management and the UB Office of Science, Technology Transfer and Economic Outreach (STOR), and is funded with a $1 million endowment from the late Henry A. Panasci Jr. to facilitate and promote the commercialization of UB-generated technologies. It was also designed to provide a mechanism for bringing students from different disciplines together with students from the School of Management to maximize their business and scientific potential. Over the past 4 years, more than 60 teams have completed for a first-place prize of $25,000 and a second-place prize of $10,000 in start-up capital as well as in-kind awards for business services.