Good Bye Charlie - Out to Lunch - It's Baton Rouge

Thirty years ago, a young, high energy entrepreneur left his
private sector job to create the Louisiana Business and Technology
Center on the LSU campus, a business incubator for small startups.
In the three decades since, the LBTC has helped launch hundreds of
businesses and has spawned the creation of the much larger LSU
Innovation Park, a 13 year old facility on its own south campus
dedicated to research commercialization. This edition of Out to
Lunch Baton Rouge is a special tribute to that man, Charlie D
Agostino, who is retiring at the end of the 2018. Few people in
Louisiana know more about business incubation and economic
development than Charlie, who himself is a 1972 LSU graduate with
degrees in chemistry in business. He started his career with NASA.
In 1988, LSU recruited him to develop the LBTC, which today is the
flagship entity on the 200 acre Innovation Park, which is about
five miles downriver from the main LSU campus and today includes
not only the LBTC but also the LSU Student Incubator, LSU Ag Center
Food Incubator, Pennington Biotech Initiative, ProtoStripes Center,
and the Louisiana Emerging Technology Center. It s an incredible
ecosystem that really seeks to connect the dots in a market that
hasn t typically been an easy place for entrepreneurs and small
businesses to get a start. Charlie, thanks for being here today on
Out to Lunch. Joining host Stephanie Riegel and Charlie is the man
who will succeed him, Dave Winwood. Currently Dave divides his time
between LSU s Innovation Park, where he is Assistant eEecutive
Director, and the Pennington Biomedical Research Center, where he
serves as Associate Executive Director. Photos over lunch at
Mansurs on the Boulevard.

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