1916 Business & Media Center
Chicago Southland Business Incubator
Located at 1916 174th St. in East Hazel Crest, IL 60429, just south of I-80/294, with access to downtown Chicago and the area’s major airports, the 1916 Business & Media Center provides a shared office space where Southland professionals can thrive.
This incubator was developed by the Chicago Southland Economic Development Corporation, the Supply Chain Innovation Center and Business Incubator at Governors State University, and the Illinois Department of Commerce & Economic Opportunity.
1916 Business & Media Center is a shared office space with unique services to support e-commerce companies. Anyone with an OPEN DESK MEMBERSHIP can embrace remote working with access to a safe local office for meetings and access to digital technologies. Smaller firms or organizations can use this local office to connect to a regional network for support centered on a physical and social network. 1916 Business & Media Center creates a convivial social place for creative people to mingle and share ideas over a cup of coffee.
Podcast Studio: An essential requirement for manufacturing companies to succeed in connecting to B2B and B2C markets is creating compelling and educational audio content. This requires expertise in storytelling, audio editing, audio Livestream, content creation, and podcast platform navigation. The incubator’s podcast studio is replete with state-of-the-art microphones and computers with editing software offered to clients. The SCICBI will organize classes from the GSU professors for hands-on training in these areas and offer consultancy and courses which will complement the full online training program developed by B2Btail.
Video Livestream on Facebook/YouTube and Webinars: The Incubators will have the capacity to host and produce live video streams and video editing. Like the content posted on digital communications, these live streaming programs create a way to interact more directly with customers. The E-Commerce program will help clients produce video-based content and again develop methods to analyze data to help manufacturing companies adjust their content to achieve optimal communication results with customers. The video conference center is equipped with state-of-the-art cameras and computers with editing software and the potential consultation and classes from the GSU faculty.
Digital Communications: Once video-based stories are created, the E-Commerce for Manufactures program will provide online training programs designed by B2Btail complemented by direct consultancy on organizing and presenting this information on marketing channels. The program will help companies create different postings in these media and carefully monitor analytics from the postings to evaluate which type of storytelling o posting can acquire the best result.
Additive Manufacturing: 3D printing is moving out of the prototyping world into production. Digital production is being connected to digital marketing/communications with customers, particularly around service requirements and personalized items. SCICBI E-Commerce for Manufacturing Companies will help companies explore how to use additive manufacturing to create some parts needed for service replacing inventories and creating directly for sale other small “craft’ parts.
Sustainable and Diverse Supply Chains: By directly connecting to customers creating more transparent relationships, E-Commerce clearly demands that companies have more sustainable and diverse supply chains. E-Commerce is part of an overall trend of much more complete supply chains, and thus, being able to prove sustainable and various operations have become critical. The E-Commerce program will offer a class in Sustainable and Diverse Supply Chains and consultancy to create such chains.
Showroom for new Energy Technologies: We seek to showcase new renewable energy technologies in the buildings, such as solar, renewable natural gas, and electric EV charging systems.
Research: In each of these areas, it is clear that this is a required developing field where it will be critical for companies to move back into a hybrid world that maintains Omnichannel marketing. The 1916 Business & Media Center E-Commerce for manufacturing program will use these collaborations in each of these areas to develop new techniques and capabilities that implement marketing as new digital channels continue to evolve. It includes a series of innovative online workshops to help small startups to start their own e-commerce business. We will provide training, but we aim to work together to experience, test, and develop new techniques. For example, how do companies best replace the decline of the trade shows, what type of video works bests, how would companies create podcasts that connect to customers, etc.
Please contact reggie.greenwood@chicagosouthlandedc.org if you are interested.
