A modern glass building has brought together a collection of passionate individuals, determined to build and grow their business dreams into real-life companies, with a series of "on tap" experts accompanying them on their journey.

An incubator of high-tech ideas, iAccelerate lies within the University of Wollongong's Innovation Campus, and welcomes start-up businesses which have a superb idea and are dedicated to growing their company in the region. The only catch - their idea has to be able to reach global scale.

The website reads: "iAccelerate is the essential cog of the Illawarra innovation ecosystem, which will leverage the Illawarra region's manufacturing-based economy into a high-tech [environment]."

The program is the brainchild of Elizabeth Eastland - an inventor and start-up creator herself - who in 2010 discovered a need for an entrepreneurial community after flocks of innovative and highly skilled UOW graduates were leaving the area.

"We were graduating the highest number of [Information and Communication Technology] graduates in the whole country and they, by and large, had to leave to find employment and I was just scratching my head ... there's something wrong with this picture with all this dynamic talent leaving and it was just at the beginning of what was a real start-up boom," Eastland says.

In 2012 the program opened its doors to companies ranging from one-man-shows up to teams of 10, and allowed them to flourish by giving them networking opportunities, mentoring, a legal team, and taught them everything they needed "to wrap around their idea" in order to make it a success.

"A start-up is fraught with failure - it's a hard, hard, hard life - and the statistics are something like one in 100 succeed," Eastland says.

"It's not for the lack of a good team, not for lack of a good idea but young companies are very vulnerable. They haven't yet entered the market, they don't have a cash flow, they don't have established customers."

The iAccelerate chief executive says the program is definitely an ambitious long-term game. She expects thousands of new jobs to be created in the region during the next decade and beyond.

When asked why she set up shop in Wollongong, she says the "cluster of innovation" theory. While there are similar programs the world over - including Sydney - the highest performing business ecosystems come out of small towns and are often stationed around a technology university.

"Michael Porter invented the idea of the cluster theory, that businesses cluster together around research institutions and they form communities that thrive," she says. "I believe that happens very rapidly in a smaller community such as the Illawarra, where there already is a strong community feeling. People know each other, they trust each other."

About three quarters of the companies involved come from UOW alumni. All are built around some form of technology core and range from high-performance materials to security systems and gaming, to solar technology, 3D printing, medical devices and more.

Eastland is also proud of "holding the baton" to encourage more women entrepreneurs to dive into a traditionally male domain. She deliberately reached out to women to expand her ecosystem twice as fast as anyone else.

"I think the number of female co-founders [of start-ups] is around 15 to 20 per cent. Some accelerators get up to 22 but ours is groundbreaking, I don't know of any other mould that has both genders inside the accelerator which has close to a 50-50 balance."

Sandra Pires from Bulli, is a multi-platform producer with a big idea. She founded Why Documentaries 14 years ago, but is now in the process of developing a unique multimedia concept that could mean collating the history of the world from Wollongong.

Pires is using support through iAccelerate with the aim of launching her concept on November 24, but doesn't want to give too much away except to say Yesterday Stories already has several major sponsors on board.

"Wollongong is our pilot project, but it's something that could really roll out across Australia and the world if it takes off," she says. "Even if it doesn't work it's leaving a legacy behind in that we're collecting [Wollongong's history]."

Pires says working out of the Innovation Campus is inspiring and exciting, because the other entrepreneurs involved in the program are passionate, and encourage each other to make things happen.

"[My industry is] still a male-dominated area ... and this is just a comfortable working environment and because Elizabeth is heading it, [it makes you] feel that anything's possible."

Pires says what Eastland is doing for women in business in the Illawarra is unmatched.

Eastland says creating iAccelerate is her proudest achievement.

"I'm so happy to touch so many lives, and I think I've made a difference in the world which I hope is not momentary, I hope we've inspired people," she says.