Could Tampa be the next Silicon Valley - attracting hundreds, even thousands, of high-paying high-tech jobs?
If you ask at the Tampa Bay Technology Incubator program, the answer is yes.
The University of South Florida incubator center in North Tampa is home to 25 high-tech startup companies employing nearly 100 people. The average salary is $75,000 a year.
"We had a waiting list when we opened the doors," said Rod Casto, executive director of the USF Research Foundation. "There is a real demand for high-tech companies to be associated with the university."
Draper Laboratory, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology spinoff with headquarters in Cambridge, Mass., was attracted to Tampa and the incubator because of USF's research programs.
Shankar Sundaram, director of Draper Laboratory in Tampa, thinks Florida is fertile ground for biotech growth.
"We have access to a wonderful core of technical people both within the organization and at USF and the greater Tampa Bay health science community," he said.
Draper researchers work on biomedical innovations.
"A surgeon could come to us and say, 'I wish I had a different way to image this object or this particular organ of the body,'" Sundaram said.
Draper researchers would try to find a solution.
Three-quarters of the companies in the incubator group are in the biotech life-sciences industry. Others are engineering and information technology companies.
"These companies already think of Florida as a technology space, and we do, too," Casto said. "We support the community by developing these high-wage high-tech jobs that everyone is looking for today."
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