Archive for the ‘Business’ Category
Morning post. June 17, 2010.
Jumping back into full-time freelance writing has been a chance to reinvent my routine. I’m still tweaking it, trying to find a flow that will be productive, stimulating and sustainable. One aspiration: one blog post per morning, a quick, daily round-up to share interesting links, let you know what I’m working on, and focus my thoughts and energy for the day ahead. So here’s a trial run. I can’t promise it’ll be back tomorrow, so enjoy, and lemme know what you think.
Today, I’ll be reading, digesting and starting to write something about the Minneapolis Chamber’s new 2010 MSP Business Vitality Index (PDF here). Thoughts/impressions?
I’m also following tips and tracking down companies to cover in next week’s issue of The Line. If you know of local startups that are growing or doing something cool, lemme know.
Here’s some links:
TECHNOLOGY
TEKSystems, an IT staffing firm in Minnesota, has filed a lawsuit against a former employee alleging her LinkedIn connections violate a non-compete agreement (Wired/Computerworld)
SUSTAINABILITY
Cap and Trade will burden the rich, but ease energy costs for the poor (Fast Company)
More push back against wind power. A group called Goodhue Wind Truth has put up a billboard accusing T. Boone Pickens of giving residents “the shaft.” (Finance & Commerce)
Advanced Bioenergy, a Wayzata ethanol company, disclosed Wednesday that it’s seeking to raise $10.35 million in equity. (SEC Edgar)
ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Pine Technical College in Pine City is using a federal grant to set up a $2.4 million entrepreneurship center and technology business incubator. (Finance & Commerce)
ABRA’ Auto Body & Glass is touting CEO Rollie Benjamin’s Entrepreneur of the Year award. I had the chance to interview Benjamin a couple of weeks ago about how he grew the company from a single repair shop in Fridley to a 100-location chain. You’ll be able to read my story in the August issue of Twin Cities Business magazine. (BusinessWire)
JOBS/ECONOMY
The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis predicts Minnesota might not return to pre-recession employment levels until 2013. (Finance & Commerce)
mono, a branding agency I wrote about for The Line a couple of weeks ago, continues to grow. It just added two more creative hires. (PR Newswire)
Reporters Notebook: Numbers suggest Minnesota has a ways to go in reclaiming its entrepreneurial ‘mojo’
I’m attending the launch event this afternoon for a group called MOJO Minnesota, an “innovation advocacy force” that wants to “reignite Minnesota’s culture of innovation.” I met with co-founder Ernest Grumbles a few weeks ago, and he explained they’re not going to be about putting out more studies and white papers. They’re going to be about action, he said. This will include state policy advocacy, “fostering dialogue,” and putting on events that connect like-minded entrepreneurs, investors and others.
A study showed up in my inbox this morning that suggests the MOJO team will have their work cut out for themselves. The Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity (PDF) is an annual survey of new business starts. This year’s report shows U.S. entrepreneurial activity in 2009 was at its highest level since 1996. More new companies were formed in this country last year than during the 1999 or 2000 tech boom years. Minnesota, however, is singled-out for having one of the lowest rates of entrepreneurial activity.
In 2009, Minnesota recorded 220 new businesses per 100,000 adult residents, just beating out Alabama (210 per 100,000), Pennsylvania (200 per 100,000) and Nebraska (200 per 100,000). Mississippi was last with 170 new starts per 100,000 adult residents. I’m admittedly still learning this beat, but the numbers surprised me. I’d have guessed we’d be in the middle of the pack somewhere — not the bottom five.
Maybe it’s just that I’m better tuned in to the conversation, but it seems like there’s an awful lot of talk lately about how to make Minnesota more entrepreneurial. Can we do it? There’s excitement about the angel investor tax credit passed by the Legislature this session. I’ve also heard concerns that it’s not enough, that we need to do something bigger to overcome our cultural resistance to risk-taking.
Guessing I’ll hear some ideas later today.
Reporters Notebook: How Minnesota companies are using nanotechnology
I spent the morning at Medtronic’s Moundsview campus for an event called “Nanotechnology – A Showcase of Current Applications in the Region,” put on by Life Science Alley and MN Nano.
I’m back at my desk now, and here’s my quick summary.
We heard presentations from ten Minnesota companies (and one from Canada) about how they’re currently using nanotechnology and how they might use it in the future. The uses were all pretty varied. Some companies are using nanotechnology to develop cheap, disposable diagnostics tools (Diagnostic Biosensors, Douglas Scientific). Others are using nanotech to make tools last longer by coating them with thin, near indestructible layers of particles (Phygen).
Darrel Untereker, vice president of technology for Medtronic, started off the morning by explaining what nanotechnology is, and how it can be difficult to comprehend. “It’s everything, and yet it’s nothing.” In short, it’s any technology that centers around manipulating materials at a spectacularly small scale — a nanometer is one billionth of a meter. Scientists have discovered that materials behave different when isolated at that scale. The Periodic Table? Forget it, said Emil Hallin, director of strategic scientific development at Canadian Light Source. At the nano scale, materials may have entirely different properties.
A few of the presentations were too technical my novice brain to keep up with, but several were quite accessible. Here’s a few very small summaries of some of the presentations:
- Douglas Scientific, a company based in Alexandria, is developing a tool aimed at cutting the cost and time it takes to analyze biofluids. Currently, much of that work is done using micro test plates, a compact tray that can hold dozens of liquid samples. Douglas Scientific’s product compacts that even further by sealing nanoliter samples inside a thin plastic tape, which can be fed through a machine and scanned for data.
- RJA Dispersions is a Maplewood company led by two former 3M employees. It produces nano-particle and pigment dispersions that are used to make ink jet ink. The particles need to be small enough that they won’t clog the ink jet nozzles and stable enough so that they won’t coagulate inside the cartridges.
- And Kevin Kluggtvedt summarized efforts by the Rushford Institute for NanoTechnology to make the southern Minnesota town a hub for nanotechnology (Little Particles on the Prairie?). Companies include Rushford Hypersonic and Kluggtvedt’s company, Rushford NanoElectro Chemical Co.
Were you there, too? What did you take away? Feel free to share in the comments section.
Best Buy preparing open-source release of IdeaX suggestion box
If you’ve ever dropped an idea into the suggestion box at a store or your workplace, chances are pretty good that nothing ever happened with it. A manager maybe emptied the box at the end of the month, skimmed through the notes, possibly relayed one or two to his manager, then tossed them all into the nearest blue recycling bin.
The time you spent scribbling with a stubby pencil on a quarter-sheet of paper probably went to waste.
Idea flow is a challenge even for companies with a reputation for feeding off employee and customer suggestions. Take Best Buy. The consumer electronics retailer has a culture that encourages employees to speak up when they have thoughts for improving the company. But until recently it hasn’t had a place to collect and organize those suggestions where they wouldn’t get lost in shuffle.
“It was a part of our nature that we weren’t fully taking advantage of,” says Joshua Kahn, manager of emerging media technology for Best Buy.
That started to change a few years ago with the advent of social media, including Blue-Shirt Nation, the in-house network that allows Best Buy employees from around the world to connect with one another.
Now, the company is developing a new tool: a social, virtual, online suggestion box aimed at capturing — and capitalizing on — ideas submitted by its customers and employees from around the world.
The project is called Best Buy IdeaX, and it launched in May 2009. In a few weeks, the company expects to publish an open-source version, allowing anyone else to use the code for free as long as they share improvements with Best Buy and all other users. The release will mark the first time the retailer has ever issued a program as an open-source project. Read the rest of this entry »
Co-working sites aim to give Twin Cities telecommuters a better connection
Twin Cities telecommuters have a new option for getting out of the house, and it doesn’t require buying a cup of coffee.
A pair of “co-working” centers opened this week in St. Paul, one in downtown and another in the St. Anthony Park neighborhood.
The centers are independent of each other, but both were inspired by similar hubs on the East and West coasts. The idea is to create a place where self-employed and telecommuting professionals can come together to work, and also benefit from some of the socializing, networking and collaborating that happens in a conventional office.
“It’s not really an office, and it’s not really a coffee shop, but it’s this other, third place and we go there to get work done plus socialize,” said Garrick Van Buren, a Twin Cities web developer who has followed the co-working movement on his blog.
The economy makes it an especially good time to experiment with co-working because many workers are in transition and there’s a surplus of commercial office space, he said. Read the rest of this entry »
Chamber draws heat on climate change position
Greenhouse gases are trapping heat in our atmosphere and warming the planet at an alarming rate.
Climate scientists believe if we don’t respond appropriately in the next decade or so, global warming will cause oceans to rise, disease to spread, droughts to prolong, storms and wildfires to intensify, and scores of species to go extinct.
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, however, foresees a different apocalyptic vision: a future in which American businesses are forced to do their part to help avert the crisis. (Continue reading…)
Motorcycle school hopes to rev up enrollment with ‘green’ choppers
Tommy Creal builds motorcycles that are meant to catch the eye’s attention.
That effect is intensified here in this sprawling, basement shop room beneath Minneapolis Community & Technical College (MCTC) where a pair of Creal’s custom choppers and all their flashy chrome curves share the space with rows of dull, boxy fans and air ducts used by the college’s HVAC program.
Creal, 23, made a name for himself in Chicago teaching people how to build these bikes from scratch during a series of three-day boot camps. The motorcycles he and his students built over the past four years are one-of-a-kind bikes. And that will certainly be true of Creal’s latest machine. Its most distinguishing feature: It’ll run on purified water instead of gasoline. (Continue reading…)
The Business Agenda is now on Twitter
The Business Agenda, my linky round-up of Minnesota company news for MinnPost.com, is now on Twitter. You can follow @BizAgenda for alerts to new blog posts, as well as a hand-picked mix of retweets and bonus links covering name-brand Minnesota companies like 3M, Target, Best Buy, Medtronic, General Mills and others. The past week or so has brought an interesting mix of stories to my plate. Some highlights:
What does it mean that Wells Fargo is hanging on to its TARP funds?
Wells Fargo found itself in unflattering company when the Treasury Department cleared 10 major banks — but not Citigroup, Bank of America and Wells Fargo — to repay TARP funds awarded in the fall. But observers say that probably does not signal anything significant about Wells’ financial condition. (Read story here…)
Lift Bridge Brewery is the Twin Cities area’s newest micro
Stillwater is best known as one of the state’s early logging towns, but it was also one of the state’s first brewing centers. Now a group of longtime home brewers is trying to bring back a piece of that history by going pro with their hobby.
Lift Bridge Brewery began a few years ago when cofounders Brad Glynn and Steve Rinker, then coworkers at a construction and engineering firm, discovered their shared passion for making beer. Over lunch one day, they decided to dust off their equipment and start a brewing business—a plan so simple that it’s certainly been dreamed up over pints by countless other home brewers before. But unlike most, they’ve carried it out. (Continue reading…)
