YOUNGSTOWN — The Youngstown Business Incubator has won a $150,000 prize in Stage 2 of the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2023 Growth Accelerator Fund competition, a program that supports a national innovation ecosystem.

The business startup incubator downtown won the award for its Appalachian Advanced Manufacturing Ecosystem, a model “to build strategic partnerships that will support the launch, growth and scale” of STEM- and research and development-focused small businesses, according to a press release.

Also, the plan will “amplify the impact” of Growth Accelerator partnerships and work to “foster and facilitate” a national ecosystem “that advances equitable investment in advanced manufacturing within Appalachia and other underserved communities,” the release states.

“The strong partnerships between YBI, America Makes: the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute and Youngstown State University helped secure our initial win and put us in a great position to go after Stage 2 funding,” Barb Ewing, YBI chief executive, said.

It was May when the YBI announced it had won $50,000 in Stage 1 of the competition. That money was to build partnerships for the model.

Program activities include promoting small business innovation research and small business technology transfer research grants to university partners and small businesses, encouraging capital investment in early-stage advanced manufacturing companies, raising awareness of advanced manufacturing technologies within regional manufacturers, creating opportunities for entrepreneurship and supporting diversity and inclusion in manufacturing.

Winners of Stage 2 were selected through a multi-tier review panel process with experts in entrepreneurship, business, innovation and strategic planning inside and out of the federal government.