Last week was a busy period on the awards front.
Both the Small Business Administration Delaware District Office and Delaware Bio held their annual awards dinners during that period.
The dinners are always a great time for networking for two key parts of the economy with a lot of busy people.
The events also give those of us discussing the ups and downs of the economy with a little perspective.
As noted in this week’s front page story, the economy of the state is posting a sluggish performance.
But the situation would have been worse were it not for companies that have found ways to grow.
The life science arena, while taking a hit from cutbacks at AstraZeneca, has a number of thriving companies.
Two individuals who were honored by Delaware Bio were Harry Li of Wilmington Pharmatech and Benjamin Chien, founder of QPS Holdings, a company with 1,100 employees. Both companies have strong growth prospects in a global market. Both QPS and Wilmington Pharmatech are based in the Newark area.
A year ago, drug development company Incycte Corp., Wilmington, was honored by Del Bio. Incyte’s Jakafi is on the market, fighting a form of blood cancer and work is under way to see its use can be expanded to other forms of cancer. Other drugs are in the pipeline and the company is hiring.
The SBA dinner featured the same entrepreneurial spirit as exemplified by family business award winner, Hopkins and Sons, a moving and storage company; and Small Business Person of the year Coleman Bye, III, of Mercantile Press, Wilmington.
Both companies took a major hit from the recent recession and sprung back.
Mercantile looked for new opportunities and niches and invested in new equipment in an industry hit hard by an information revolution that is moving many printed products to the web or Adobe PDF files.
Hopkins kept its workforce together and worked hard to build business.
More such stories will emerge in coming years as we learn about the ability of entrepreneurs to overcome adversity and take advantage of opportunities, even in an economy that is growing far too slowly.
