Nothing can be more unsettling than change and nothing can be more rewarding than change.  Which philosophy do you subscribe to?

The Southside Bethlehem Keystone Innovation Zone is fostering change through the assistance it provides to its clients.   The KIZ provides entrepreneurs with the resources to obtain services and goods they need to advance their ideas and products into the marketplace.  The KIZ is all about changing how we view business opportunities and how we create new ones.  We must develop the recipe before we hire the cooks.  Our entrepreneurs are currently developing the products and processes that will lead to future job creation.

The KIZ has been able to marshal the necessary resources from its partnerships to provide assistance wherever it is needed.  Intellectual property or patent work, prototyping costs, access to university and college laboratories or securing marketing and business expertise are just examples of some of the assistance the KIZ has facilitated.

Therefore, what does this have to do with change and how does it affect me?

Many of us, in my generation, were taught that change meant taking risks and that was something to avoid.  Go to college, get a job, then get married and settle down.  That was the formula.  It worked for our fathers and mothers so it should work for us.

Today, I say, thank heavens for the risk takers; the visionaries and the entrepreneurs.

The new business ventures now being developed are our future.  The medical devices being developed by companies such as Third Eye Diagnostics could save your life one day.  The environmental products developed by Lehigh NanoTech, Inc. will help to make our Brownfield’s clean again, while the nanotechnology developed by EMV Technologies will make hemodialysis faster, safer and more efficient for both the patient and the medical facility.

These companies and many others located in the Southside Bethlehem KIZ define our future in terms of new products, new technologies and new jobs.