Wisconsin inventors have plenty of opportunities to get involved in networking, learn more about financing and meet other resources to aid in the invention process.
In the Milwaukee area, the state-sponsored Inventors and Entrepreneurs Clubs have had a large following since they were launched last fall, said Mary Steinbrecher, director of the Council of Small Business Executives (COSBE) and executive director of CEOs of Growing Businesses (CGB), both organizations within the Metropolitan Milwaukee Association of Commerce (MMAC).
“The ultimate goal is to create jobs and help provide resources for people to start new companies,” Steinbrecher said.
Steinbrecher and Wayne Staats of the Granville Business Development Center in Milwaukee run the monthly meetings of the Inventors and Entrepreneurs Forum of Greater Milwaukee. They average about 40 people per meeting and focus each meeting on a different topic pertaining to the invention and business start-up processes, Staats said.
Jill Gilbert Welytok, a Milwaukee-based patent attorney, co-facilitates the Ozaukee/North Shore Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club and averages about 60 people per meeting, she said. Her next meeting will take place Tuesday, June 26, at the Frank L. Weyenberg Library of Mequon-Thiensville. The topic will be how individual inventors can manufacture overseas.
Local resources for investors include:
• The Inventors and Entrepreneur Forum of Greater Milwaukee; contact Mary Steinbrecher at (414) 287-4128 or Wayne Staats at (414) 305-9130.
• The Ozaukee/North Shore Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club; contact Jill Gilbert Welytok at jwelytok@abtechlaw.com.
• The Greater Brookfield Chamber of Commerce sponsors the Brookfield Inventors and Entrepreneurs Club Serving Waukesha County, www.brookfieldchamber.com.
• The Small Business Administration, www.sba.gov.
• Wisconsin Women’s Business Initiative Corp. (WWBIC), www.wwbic.com.
• The U.S. Patent Office, www.uspto.gov.
• The State of Wisconsin Department of Commerce, www.commerce.state.wi.us.
