Interim director of RIT’s Venture Creations named

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Richard Notargiacomo

Richard Notargiacomo, a RIT faculty member for more than 10 years, has been named interim director of RIT’s Venture Creations business incubator.

He succeeds Bill Jones, who has decided to work part-time at Venture Creations.

“I want to thank Bill for getting us where we are,” Notargiacomo said. Notargiacomo, of Penfield, received his MBA at the University of Rochester’s Graduate School of Business and is a certified New Product Development Professional for the Product Development and Management Association. He joined RIT as an adjunct professor in 2003 and has worked at Venture Creations and RIT’s Saunders College of Business in 2010 and most recently served as director of student innovation at the Simone Center for Student Innovation and Entrepreneurship.

He said he will begin working on updating Venture Creations’ strategic plan, and will work to increase the number of new companies entering the incubator will be created by current students and faculty members. Also, he expects a large number to be involved with green energy. Ideally, the incubator could see 20 new companies a year.

“We’re going to keep going and build upon the good things as we’ve been doing,” Notargiacomo said.

About Venture Creations

Rochester Institute of Technology opened Venture Creations in 2003 as its business incubator, focusing on opportunities that leveraged the university’s core technical competencies.

Its mission is to create high-growth companies in the Rochester region, provide experiential learning in entrepreneurship to RIT students and to commercialize RIT innovations and intellectual property.

As of Oct. 28, the incubator is supporting 22 companies in various technologies and stages of development. Since 2003, it has graduated 26 companies, created over 400 new jobs, and helped its member companies secure over $36 million in investments.

In 2009, Venture Creations was selected as one of six Clean Energy Incubators sponsored by the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority.

It has 30,000-square-feet in a two-story office building at 125 Tech Park Drive, off John Street, just south of the main RIT campus.

Companies that are considered eligible to enter Venture Creations usually have technology in one of RIT’s core competencies, have a business with high growth potential, and must be past proof-of-concept stage.

Visit the Venture Creations website.