2010 – Page 73 of 78

Successful ACE shows Mich ahead of the entrepreneurial curve

By Newsroom

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January 27, 2010

here is a new bit of conventional wisdom forming in local circles: Michigan (the Ann Arbor area especially) is way ahead of the rest of nation when it comes to building small businesses and cultivating entrepreneurs. Some concrete evidence of that popped up last week at the Annual Collaboration for Entrepreneurship in Ann Arbor's Skyline High School. Attendance almost doubled, going from 550 last year to 917 last week. That helped create a buzz of optimism about the state's small business climate that seems to be hitting a tipping point."Michigan really does do certain things well," says Gerry Roston, chair of the planning committee for this year's ACE and owner of the Pair of Docs Consulting in Saline. "There are a number of organizations that support entrepreneurship. We seem to have a lot more of these than other states and they work together really well."He points to newcomers like Ann Arbor SPARK as gaining traction and working well with established organizations, like the New Enterprise Forum. A main focus of groups like this revolve around the idea of what's best for the entrepreneur. It's ethos like this that have attracted economic development agencies from Delaware and California to this year's ACE."They come to Michigan to see how it's done," Roston says.That's not to say the local entrepreneur community has arrived. There is a lot of work to be done to support these burgeoning small businesses. Chief among those is start-up capital in an environment where it seems lenders are frozen in carbonite Han Solo style."We need to grow our venture capital community," Roston says. "We have fund here. They're great funds but they're smaller funds."Which might explain one of the reasons why ACE was so popular this year. The event holds several contests that feature cold, hard start-up cash for the winners. Some of those include $1,000 for Intercollegiate Business Idea Pitch Competition (won by Ken Lange of Saginaw Valley State University for a telescoping dock), a year of corporate membership for NEF and virtual incubator tenancy in Ann Arbor SPARK (won by Howard Brown of Oak Park-based CircleBuilder) and even $140 for the Twitter Biz Idea Contest, which was won by Barbara O’Connell of Ypsilanti's WhereToFindCare.com.Source: Gerry Roston, chair of the planning committee for Annual Collaboration for EntrepreneurshipWriter: Jon Zemke

U-M research hits $1B in 2009, including $218M in federal stimulus money

By Newsroom

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Community Development

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January 27, 2010

One billion is quite the number. That includes nine zeros, takes up 10 digits and when talking about money makes an awful lot of people happy.Those people are involved in research at the University of Michigan, which crossed the $1 billion mark, and included $218 million in federal stimulus cash, for research spending last year. It's a first for U-M."It has a substantial impact in accelerating the programs we have already," says Stephen Forrest, vice president for research at the University of Michigan. An audio link of his presentation to the U-M Board of Regents about the university's research efforts can be found here.Of course the problem with reaching new heights is staying there. A $200 million plus bump in one-time funding from the federal stimulus isn't a long-term proposition, so it seems logical the university will have to work hard to keep its research spending in the billion-dollar range. However, Forrest likes to point to trends to answer whether such spending is sustainable."We've never fallen back from a number," Forrest says. "It's always increasing."Other fun numbers recently released from the university in regards to recent research activities are: Research spending is up 9.4 percentThe university produced 350 inventions last yearEight new start-ups were licensed300 university employees are being moved into the newly acquired orth Campus Research Complex (the old Pfizer campus) Source: Stephen Forrest, vice president for research at the University of MichiganWriter: Jon Zemke

Logic Solutions hires 4 people for Ann Arbor HQ, more growth expected

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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January 27, 2010

The new thing in tech development is smart phone applications. That's what's driving growth at Logic Solutions.The Ann Arbor-based firm recently hired four new people for its headquarters on the northeast side of town. That brings its staff to 32 people (between its Ann Arbor and Ford offices), a number that is expected to grow significantly by the end of the year."The big push in the firm is on mobile application development," says Angela Kujava, director of marketing at Logic Solutions. "We have had several projects for mobile applications come in the last few weeks."Logic Solutions is a software development firm that will turn 15 years old this year. It has a significant presence both here in Ann Arbor and also abroad in China. There it is has offices in Nanjing, Beijing and Shanghai and employs nearly 100 people.Source: Angela Kujava, director of marketing at Logic SolutionsWriter: Jon Zemke

NIGHT & DAY: Park City Comes To Ann Arbor

By Jeff Meyers

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Arts and Culture

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January 27, 2010

We may not have the mountains but we've definitely got the snow. For two days this week the Michigan Theater becomes a venue for the Sundance Film Festival. It's just one of the half dozen events we spotlight in FilterD.

Big Ideas For Georgetown’s Mall

By Constance Crump

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Community Development

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January 27, 2010

All over Michigan it's the same story: Suburban-style shopping malls going under and boarding up. Could the failure of places like Ann Arbor's Georgetown Mall be an opportunity for innovative ideas about mixed-use development and walkablilty? Concentrate talks to neighbors and developers about what could be.

Beloved former U-M Pres. Robben W. Fleming dies at 93

By Newsroom

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In The News

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January 27, 2010

When Vietnam War protesters occupied the president's office at the University of Michigan, Robert Fleming was there to greet them.Excerpt:Robben W. Fleming, who as president of the University of Michigan in the late 1960s and '70s steered it through a turbulent era of student protests, using his labor negotiator's skills to help defuse crises before they could turn violent, died Jan. 11 in Ann Arbor, Mich. He was 93.His son, James, confirmed the death. His father’s health had been failing for some time, he said.Mr. Fleming, who led Michigan from 1968 to 1978, was often described as patient and unflappable. Those qualities proved useful in March 1969, when members of the left-wing protest group Students for a Democratic Society, demonstrating against the presence of military personnel on campus, barricaded a Navy recruiter in a room.Mr. Fleming, an opponent of the Vietnam War, refused to summon police, and the threat passed. But he stood firm against protesters in defending the right of the armed services to recruit at the school."The university must always be a world of ideas, often in conflict," Mr. Fleming said. "It ceases to be a university, however, when a group which is willing to use totalitarian tactics can impose on the rest of us its views."Read the rest of the story here and more on Fleming here.

Georgia’s The Tifton Gazette raves about Ann Arbor area

By Newsroom

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In The News

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January 27, 2010

A Georgia peach found something sweet in her visit to Ann Arbor.Excerpt:Lobster bisque at a walk-up hot dog stand sold me on Ann Arbor, Michigan. Good chance of finding other surprising combinations, I figured, when this bisque tasted great.Clearly this is a university town with a big medical complex but it’s also homey, tasty, talented and unpretentious.Nice personality for a visit. My notion panned out in nearby Ypsilanti, Chelsea and Dexter too but Ann Arbor is the place to start. Detroit’s only 35 miles to the northeast but that city-in-massive-automotive change wasn’t my focus.Read the rest of the story here.

Ann Arbor’s Sakti3 continues push for electrifications of autos

By Newsroom

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Economic Development

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January 27, 2010

Ann Marie Sastry represents how big of a leap forward for technology transfer from U-M can go... and demonstrated it at the Detroit Auto Show. Excerpt:University of Michigan engineering professor Ann Marie Sastry – CEO and co-founder of a hot, new automotive battery development company – sits shivering in her overcoat in the cold Cobo basement at the Detroit auto show.But Sastry and her company, Ann Arbor-based Sakti3, is far from "out in the cold." They are in the auto business for the long haul and do not plan on being relegated to a basement booth forever. Eventually, if all goes well, her company’s battery technology will be powering the cars upstairs on the main show floor's Electric Avenue.What is it about the "Eureka moment" in her UM lab that prompted her to help found a company two years ago? What is it that turned the heads and opened the wallets of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and cleantech venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who chipped in $2 million out the gate? What exactly is her company’s battery technology?Here's her answer: "We're interested in both materials and manufacturing technologies at Sakti3. So, we're sort of looking at the intersection of those things."She pauses. She grins slightly, then says somewhat apologetically: "Sorry, I know that's not good enough."This is Sastry's polite way of saying that any further information is proprietary. She will only add that, "We are working on a manufacturing technology, and we think that's one of the bottlenecks."Read the rest of the story here.

U-M filmmaker’s big dreams land him in Sundance

By Newsroom

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Arts and Culture

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January 27, 2010

A U-M student is hoping to make a big splash with his movie at the Sundance Film Festival.Excerpt:Sultan Sharrief is dreaming. But since he is walking around the Sundance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, he realizes that he is not asleep.The 26-year-old filmmaker and University of Michigan graduate is showing his film "Bilal's Stand" at the renowned festival. It's one of just eight chosen for the festival's NEXT program, which showcases low-budget independent films by a next generation of producers and directors."Bilal's Stand," which Sharrief wrote in his U-M screenwriting class, tells the semi-autobiographical story of a young man from a struggling family torn between his aspirations to attend the University of Michigan and the expectations of friends and family that he work at his family's taxi stand.Read the rest of the story here.

Borders decides to donate books instead of destroy them

By Newsroom

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General

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January 27, 2010

Borders takes a tip from its readers and decides not to destroy its surplus books and donate them instead.Excerpt:Online activists have cried out during the last month that giant Book retailer Borders is defying common sense with their announcement that they are closing some 200 stores of the Waldenbooks chain by the end of January. Not because everyone will miss Waldenbooks (yeah, we thought they were long gone too), but because Borders planned to trash all the unsold books from the stores.Change.org wrote Thursday that the company planned to tear the covers off the books and dump the books so they can't be resold. The destruction of the books is a standard practice in the industry.Borders employees, hoping to shame the company into changing their ways ala H&M have formed a Facebook group to support the donation of the books to local libraries and nonprofits instead.Read the rest of the story here.