By John Temple Ligon
Temple@TheColumbiaStar.com

Joel Stevenson Photo by John Temple Ligon

South Carolina losses in manufacturing jobs are huge. They are mostly in textiles. Delighted with landing BMW in the Upstate during the Campbell administration and most recently Vought Aircraft in the Lowcountry under the direction of Governor Sanford, the state and its Department of Commerce still have plenty to brag about.

But chasing smokestacks can't be the only means to statewide economic development and expansion. Even though landing big-time manufacturing concerns and their building campuses gets everyone excited. Another route to wealth creation is taking hold.

A business incubator gives start-up businesses, the small businesses most likely to incur rapid growth, a hand up and some seasoned advice. The USC Technology Incubator at 1225 Laurel Street has been growing businesses since 1998. It has been under the direction of Joel Stevenson since early 1999.

Stevenson was born in San Antonio, Texas, while his father was assigned to Kelly Air Force Base, and his mother ran the home front. He graduated from high school in Annandale, Virginia, near Washington D.C., and accepted a football scholarship to the Georgia Institute of Technology as a tight end. He played against Steve Spurrier in the 1967 Orange Bowl, and he was coached by Clemson's Frank Howard in the 1968 North-South All-Star Game. After graduating from Georgia Tech in industrial management, he played for the Cleveland Browns of the NFL for a year.

After football, Stevenson worked for the National Bank of Georgia in Atlanta and later Continental Can, learning big business and sales strategies and individual limits along the way.

That way led to setting up a waste management business with his brother-in-law, beginning in 1974. Over the next 20 years, Stevenson was president of four waste management firms, and he came out well ahead in each. Two were sold to private investors. One was taken public on the stock exchange, and one was sold to Safety Kleen.

Stevenson took his money and took it easy, taking his golf handicap down to a very respectable four. Soon enough, though, he was talking with the Advanced Technology Development Corporation at Georgia Tech, where he was hired to mentor start- up companies - help run an incubator.

His success at the ATDC in Atlanta attracted feelers from the USC Technology Incubator, where he went to work as the director.

In August 2002, the USC Technology Incubator borrowed $160,000 with no strings from the City of Columbia, and in August 2003, paid it back. The city participated again in May 2006 when the business incubator moved everything into 1225 Laurel Street, the city's building, for a rent of $1 a year.

Stevenson's wife, Leigh, works in special projects for USC's Moore School of Business, where he also teaches entrepreneurship. Their daughter, Gray, is a USC Honors College graduate in political science and a graduate (MFA) of the Actors Studio in New York City. Their son, Xan, is a senior at Emory University in Decatur, Georgia.

An inspiring success story, the USC Technology Incubator claims several hundred high-paying technology jobs in town as direct results of time in the incubator. Stevenson's favorite comparisons with what he is doing can be found at Atlanta's ATDC on the Georgia Tech campus. Visit ATDC.org. For information about USC Technology Incubator, visit to www.incubator.research.sc.edu.