The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity is the state portal for resources for business. Only a portion of its resources are dedicated to small businesses and it attempts to encompass virtually all needs of businesses in different stages of growth as well as different industries.
The personal coaching and business plan development that the DCEO provides is administered through a subsidiary network of Entrepreneurship Centers and Small Business Development Centers (both of which are covered in this catalogue separately as the Chicagoland Entrepreneurship Center and the SBDC in The Incubator). The site hosts a tool that allows the entrepreneur to find the nearest resource among the hundreds or thousands that span the nation. For more particular types of businesses, the DCEO also administers:
- Procurement Technical Assistance Centers, aimed at helping businesses secure government contracts
- Regulatory Compliance Centers, helping companies understand their environmental and regulatory obligations
- Manufacturing Extension Centers, helping manufacturers modernize and benchmark themselves
- International Trade Centers / NAFTA Opportunity Centers, helping companies prepare for global trade
The DCEO administers a series of relatively low-interest loans geared towards small companies that would have trouble finding competitive loans otherwise. There are also several grants made available by the DCEO, but both the loan system and the grant system do not seem particularly well-suited for many university entrepreneurs; many of these are aimed at local governmental units or at larger companies considering larger capital investments in Illinois and a small portion targeted for woman-owned, minority-owned, or disadvantaged businesses (catalogued separately). New ventures looking for government grants would be more successful using Grants.gov (covered in this catalogue separately) coupled with the DCEO Innovation Challenge Grant Program.
Since the aim of the DCEO is to promote job security and growth in general, it is easy to see how why many of its programs might be geared to municipalities and larger businesses since these agents can provide a more immediate, larger impact on job growth. For most small businesses emerging from campus, this site is perhaps best used only for research (it provides a myriad of facts and figures relating to Illinois) and as a reference to the nearest EC or SBDC.
- General Industry
- Non-Profit, State Level
- No Entrepreneurial Experience Necessary
