Third Frontier : Innovation + Job News

"Flannel Channel." "Hot Shots @ Hot Spots." "Got*City GAME! Cleveland."

Those catchy monikers are the titles of some of the channels of the new UNCOMN.TV Network, established in April by Cleveland's Barb Siss Oney.

UNCOMN.TV is short for "unifying communities," and UNCOMN.TV Network is an online technology company that brings together employers, universities, civic organizations and communities in Northeast Ohio to inform individuals, both locally and globally, about what the region offers.

"We want to attract talent, business and resources to the region by demonstrating the rich economic assets and quality of life in Northeast Ohio," Oney explains.

"I believe that positive community change is possible, and my goal is to find ways for individuals, businesses, organizations, and institutions to collaborate to positively impact Northeast Ohio. It's one thing to produce a great show, but that has a limited life," she notes. "If we are to have an ongoing impact on attracting and retaining talent in Northeast Ohio, however, we need a way to build ongoing engagement."

UNCOMN.TV Network is a combination of relevant content, collaborative marketing and social media.

"We apply the power of traditional TV, the global reach of the web and the interactivity of social networking to deliver information about living, learning and earning in Northeast Ohio," Oney says.

Tune in to the "Flannel Channel," and you'll view programs about regional businesses, educational institutions and organizations that are employing and educating local professionals. The "Hot Shots @ Hot Spots" channel features members of the Cleveland Professional 20/30 Club, Ohio's largest young professionals group, showcasing what they think is "hot" about Cleveland.

Got*City GAME! Cleveland (GCGC) was the first program of the UNCOMN.TV Network. GCGC represents a partnership with more than 150 colleges, universities, businesses and civic organizations to showcase fun locations throughout Cleveland. "Within weeks of launching, GCGC was being watched in more than 1,065 cities in more than 66 countries," Oney says.

There are plans to launch city-specific channels for Cleveland, Akron, Canton and Youngstown. "We'll also have forums, blogs, podcasts, live webcasts of conference keynote speakers and webinars for workforce development," she notes.

UNCOMN.TV Network received funding from Cleveland's Civic Innovation Lab as well as Ohio's Third Frontier program through Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE).

Source: Barb Siss Oney, UNCOMN.TV Network LLC
Writer: Lynne Meyer

It's an unpleasant scene, but one that occurs daily in medical centers around the world. A person needs a urinary catheter. The nurse begins to place it. The catheter encounters an obstruction, so the nurse pulls it out and tries again. And again.
 
A Westerville company, PercuVision, has come up with a camera-aided alternative to make such a situation safer and more bearable. Called DirectVision, the technology is being used by nurses around the country.

"We added vision to urinary catheterization," says founder and CEO Errol Singh, who also practices urology at Capital Urology in Columbus. "As urologists, we have scopes in our hands that give us vision, and we use that primarily for diagnostic and other procedures, but the nurses unfortunately don't when they run into a difficult catheterization. (Now) the nurses can see what the problem is and are able to turn it and guide it."

PercuVision was founded in 2007, and DirectVison received FDA approval in August of 2009.

"It took time to make it through the commercialization process and get our supply chain established and so forth," says Singh. However, since then reception of the product "has been very very positive on a number of fronts. The technology is being embraced system wide in OhioHealth and we have the technology deployed in approximately six or seven sites around the country. We probably have another dozen or so sites that will be getting the technology soon."

OhioHealth, through the OhioHealth Research Institute, has supported Singh's work by facilitating clinical trials designed to confirm the device's effectiveness, he says. Other supporters include angel investors (who have funded the company to the tune of $6 million) and the Ohio Department of Development, which earlier this year awarded PercuVision a $1-million grant to develop the next generation of technology.

While the company currently employs 15 people -- 13 of whom are located in Ohio -- PercuVision plans to hire an additional 42 people in the next three to four years as the next generation of vision-guided catheters come to market.

Source: Errol Singh, PercuVision
Writer: Gene Monteith

From food service equipment and industrial cutting products to the world of bioscience innovation seems an unlikely leap for a business to make. But Birmingham-based Bettcher Industries is about to accomplish just that, awarded a $1 million Ohio Third Frontier grant to launch a new biomedical product line.

The grant, among $13 million announced on July 15, pairs Bettcher with Community Tissue Services, a Dayton non-profit tissue bank. The partners' $1 million will fund an initial 18-month project to launch Bettcher Medical Debridement Technologies, adapting current products for use in the biomedical field.

"We've been working with Community Tissue for about three years already, but in a very limited way" explains Bettcher president and COO Don Esch. "We recognized early on that a lot of our products were not entirely dissimilar from the kinds of things that were needed in their field. (The grant) is going to open a whole new world for us."

Founded as a machine shop in Cleveland in 1944, Bettcher has become an international business with offices in Switzerland, Brazil and China, among others, and sales to more than 50 countries worldwide. The company moved to Birmingham in the early 1970s, becoming a local landmark with its signature red-barn corporate headquarters just south of the Ohio Turnpike.

The new biomedical line will put existing products -- ranging from precision circular knives to pneumatic cutting tools -- to use in tissue and bone recovery. The powered circular knives already used in meat processing and taxidermy can also be used to harvest layers of skin for use in the treatment of burn patients. Meanwhile, other Bettcher products are ideally suited to harvesting bone and marrow for other transplant surgeries.

Initially, it will also mean 11 new jobs for Bettcher during the run of the 18-month launch, with the possibility of another 40-50 new jobs once the product line gains momentum, adds Esch.

"It's pretty sophisticated stuff, coming from a little red barn in the middle of a cornfield in Ohio," he chuckles.

Source: Don Esch, Bettcher Industries
Writer: Dave Malaska

A pair of Ohio University professors who turned their academic pursuits into a drug discovery company are getting closer to their goals.

Chemistry Professors Stephen Bergmeier and Mark McMills launched Promiliad Biopharma in 2002 after failing to get a National Institute of Health research grant for similar work they were doing at the university. Their research looked at ways to combat antibiotic resistance to so-called "superbugs." One of the most commonly known is MRSA or Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, an infection is caused by a staph bacteria that has become resistant to traditional antibiotics.

"We were doing academic research and applied for an NIH grant to help fund it. We failed to get the grant, but when the reviews came back a couple of reviewers said our application sounded more like a business plan than an academic research grant," says Bergmeier.

An idea was born.

"We said, Let's make a go of it," Bergmeier says.

The company is currently in preclinical trials. Its technology works by stopping a process bacteria needs to grow. If that process is hindered, the bacteria die. Antibiotic resistant indirections have become a growing international health problem, with a lack of new drugs to treat them.

Promiliad Biopharma is located in Ohio University's Innovation Center, an incubator which recently opened the Biotechnology Research and Development Facility to support the region's biotech research community.

Promiliad Biopharma has six employees and a part-time secretary. It's been awarded about $4 million in funding through the NIH's Small Business Technology Transfer program. It recently received a $100,000 grant from TechGrowth Ohio, an Athens-based development organization that receives funding from Ohio Third Frontier.

Promiliad Biopharma will continue its preclinical testing for the next couple of years, and will file an Investigational New Drug application with the U.S. Food and Drug Adminstration, Bergmeier says.

Writer: Feoshia Henderson
Source: Stephen Bergmeier, Promiliad Biopharma

Multiple sclerosis results when axons -- an extension of brain cells -- lose an essential coating called myelin, which allows neurons to communicate with each other and other parts of the body. While there are drugs available to slow the progression of the disease -- which eventually leaves a person unable to move � there is nothing on the market that can reverse the disease by restoring cells that produce the myelin.

If a Cleveland biomedical company has its way, there soon will be. Renovo Neural, a spinoff of the Cleveland Clinic, is currently helping pharmaceutical companies test new MS drugs by providing exclusive and innovative assays that analyze the potency of promising new drugs to reverse the MS process.

The company was formed in 2008 after the Cleveland Clinic received a $3-million Ohio Third Frontier grant to commercialize Renovo Neural's innovative assays. The technology is based on discoveries by Renovo Founder Bruce Trapp, chairman of the Clinic's Department of Neurosciences, and Wendy Macklin, former staff member at the Clinic's Department of Neurosciences and now professor and chair of cell and developmental biology at the University of Colorado. Trapp is now the company's chief science officer and heads its Scientific Advisory Board.

"We have two existing parts of the company," explains Satish Medicetty, Renovo's president. "In the service part of the company, we have very highly specialized assays to test new drugs for multiple sclerosis. This is the part of the company which is receiving a lot of interest in the industry right now because those are the kind of assays that are exclusively provided by our company."

The other part of the business -- the drug development arm -- is currently taking a back seat to the services side.

"We do have some intellectual property on the drug development side, so we are either looking for some licensing opportunities or partnering opportunities, or perhaps in the future if we get more funding from the state we will pursue that on a separate level as well," Medicetty says.

Renovo has just completed its first contract with a major client in tests designed to evaluate the process of generating new myelin in an animal model. 

"The client was very happy with the study and they came back to us to exend the study," Medicetty says.  Medicetty says the animail model -- which looks at MS-like brain lesions in animals -- is unique to Renovo.

The company has grown to seven full-time and two part-time employees from its initial two. Medicetty says because of interest shown by additional pharmaceutical companies, he expects that number to grow. 

Source: Statish Medicetty, Renovo Neural
Writer: Gene Monteith

Eyes in the sky. That's what Persistent Surveillance Systems  of Xenia provides companies and organizations.

PSS has six pilots and three Cessna aircraft on which its Hawkeye video surveillance camera is mounted and operated.

According to Ross McNutt, president of PSS, they've used their Hawkeye camera system to gather environmental data on the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, provide emergency support for the Iowa National Guard during a flood, help with traffic management and security at NASCAR races and support police in several major cities, including Baltimore and Philadelphia.

Last summer, Persistent Surveillance Systems received a grant of $900,000 from the Ohio Third Frontier initiative to develop wide-area airborne surveillance technology for continuous second-by-second video monitoring of city-size areas for law enforcement and security purposes.

What PSS developed is the Hawkeye II camera system.

"Hawkeye II is a colorized higher-resolution camera with 192 million pixels," McNutt explains. "Our original Hawkeye system was 88 million pixels. The Hawkeye II camera is comparable to 600 simultaneous video cameras. It enables us to watch a five-mile by five-mile area of a major city." 

The live video is downlinked in real time to PSS analysts at the command center.

"When we're working with police departments, police officers are also in our command center and in constant contact with police dispatchers who give them information about crimes in progress, "McNutt says. PSS has assisted law enforcement organizations throughout the United States with more than 30 murder investigations since 2007.

PSS started in 2007 with four employees and now has 25.

"We're partnering with Clark State Community College and the Advanced Technical Intelligence Center for Human Systems Development to train more analysts," he says. They have 45 analysts in training and plan on hiring many of them to work on the new Hawkeye II system.

"We're very appreciative of the support of the Third Frontier program," McNutt states. "It's allowing us to grow at a much faster rate."

Source: Ross McNutt, Persistent Surveillance System
Writer: Lynne Meyer

JibeCast was born of frustration after Mark Ford, the company's president, found few commercial solutions to the challenge of securely distributing training videos to new sales representatives of Qwasi, his previous startup.

"I found myself challenged to not sit on training calls every single day to regurgitate the same information over and over again," Ford says. "I found myself sitting on webinars doing a lot of internal activity versus helping my sales team close big deals. I started to think about how we might be able to leverage online video to basically put myself into a cloning machine so that I could distribute that training message consistently and effectively."

The result is JibeCast, a cloud-based service that allows clients to secure their video content, distribute it easily and track immediately who accesses it. Formed in Dayton last year, the company has distributed the product privately and plans a beta launch in the next few weeks.

"Video presents a unique challenge in that most companies infrastructures aren't well equipped to manage online video," Ford says. "The media streaming and encoding aspects of handling video are totally different than putting up a pdf on your website. And then properly formatting it and being able to secure it online is a challenge for most organizations.

JibeCast is targeting small to midsize businesses that either have a sales focus or heavy training component.

"We also have a focus on healthcare market, where they are constantly being mandated to comply to new government standards and they have to continually audit their employees and teams on process and procedure. So anywhere where there are process and procedure requirements for tracking and auditing are also a sweet spots," Ford says.

Ford lives outside of Philadelphia, but -- with the help of the Dayton Development Coalition and $300,000 in Ohio Third Frontier funds -- established the company in Dayton.

"Dayton provides access to affordable talent," Ford explains. We looked at Ohio, Cincinnati, Dayton, as a great hotbed for technology, and we said there's just a tremendous talent pool here and it comes at a significantly reduced cost."

Source: Mark Ford, JibeCast
Writer: Gene Monteith

Algae Producers set up shop in 2007 with the idea of developing algae products for the biodiesel market.

It soon became apparent that the more immediate opportunity was in other applications like nutriceuticals, aquaculture, pharmaceuticals,  and other areas.

Since then, the company hasn't looked back. Late last year the company, whose technical and sales teams are based in Madison and which plans to eventually locate the bulk of its operations in the Cleveland area, entered the marketplace with two primary products: a substance that can be used as a fish food in acquaculture, and an astaxanthin product with the same body-cleansing and antitoxin properties attributed to green tea.

"It's kind of a green tea on steroids," says Stan Robinson, the company's CFO.

Algae Producers has developed 10 exclusive partnerships and agreements for manufacture and distribution of its algae products and continues to research new ways of making algae profitable. Robinson says the company expects to book around $250,000 in revenue by the end of the second quarter. Along the way, it has shared in a $3-million Ohio Third Frontier grant with Ohio University and a number of other Ohio partners to further commercialize algae.

While the company currently has three full-time employees, Robinson says the company hopes to increase that number to eight by the end of the year and more as new products hit the marketplace. Primarily self-funded to date, the company is now raising a $2-million second round that will allow it to expand capacity, research and development, employment and a facility in the Cleveland area.

Source: Stan Robinson, Algae Producers
Writer: Gene Monteith

Calling the last week of April the "best in the 10-year history of the investor group," Cincinnati-based Queen City Angels announced the successful exits of two portfolio companies.

In an April 25 news release, Queen City Angels (QCA) noted the sale of Blue Ash Therapeutics' technology to Forest Laboratories and Healthcare Waste Solutions' acquisition by Stericycle.

As an investor of both angel capital and Third Frontier funds, Queen City says "QCA received significant returns" on the transactions.

Last year, QCA and its affiliated QCA First Fund III invested in Blue Ash Therapeutics, along with CincyTech, several individual investors and an east coast investment fund. A little over a year later, Blue Ash has now sold its key technology, Azimilide anti-arrhythmia drug, to New York-based Forest Laboratories, providing QCA with a return of almost 10 times its investment. The news release says QCA was the largest local investor and contributed more than $380,000.

Healthcare Waste Solutions has a national presence in the medical waste disposal business with plants in more than 15 metropolitan areas, QCA says. Stericycle, a Lake Forest, Ill.-based company in the same industry, acquired Healthcare Waste for $237 million.

"We firmly believe that Cincinnati is a great place to invest, and this successful outcome further validates our efforts," says Tony Shipley, QCA's chairman, in the release. "Our group has been actively funding startup companies since 2000, and we continued to pursue deals through the recessions of 2001 and 2008 with the belief that the long-term prospects of Cincinnati startups are outstanding. The real credit for these successes goes to the hard working entrepreneurs who are willing to take the risks of creating start-up ventures.

Source: Queen City Angels

A pilot program launched by the Ohio Third Frontier and the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University represents a new way to help young technology entrepreneurs get their feet on the ground in Ohio.

Modeled after nationally renowned accelerators like Y Combinator and TechStars, Ohio's New Entrepreneur Fund (ONE Fund) will award $20,000 each to 10 entrepreneurial teams as part of the pilot's first round. The funds will support business and living expenses during an 11-week period in which participants receive guidance from mentors, industry experts, seasoned entrepreneurs and investors.

Teams will compete for selection to the program, which begins June 13 and ends Sept. 1. During that time, participants will prepare concepts and business models, which they will ultimately present to investors. ONE Fund participants must reside in Ohio for the duration of the program and any resulting company must be formed in Ohio.

"We're industry agnostic," says Ben Lagemann, risk capital program manager for the Ohio Department of Development. "Information technology is likely to have a strong presence, but this is not specific to any industry or technology base. Really, we're focusing on entrepreneurship, which is a transferrable skill set between technologies, between industries."

The pilot will be coordinated through Fisher's new 10x technology accelerator, an arm of the college's Center for Entrepreneurship. Lagemann says OSU was chosen as a partner because of its proximity to government offices in Columbus, the capabilities of the Center for Entrepreneurship and the expertise of center director Michael Camp.

"Dr. Camp was able to provide a turnkey solution for us in a very, very short period of time. No one else had those resources, capabilities or stature in the state," Lagemann says.

Camp describes the partnership as "a rare connect between a state funding the teams and the university training the teams." He says the ONE Fund pilot represents the kickoff of the 10x accelerator.

Norman Chagnon, executive director of the Third Frontier Commission, says $425,000 has been made available for startup costs and two pilot rounds representing up to 20 teams. Meanwhile, Columbus venture capital firm NCT Ventures has guaranteed that one team graduating from the first round will receive $200,000 in follow-on funding.

Applications for the first round are due April 24. Those interested can apply here.

Sources: Ben Lagemann, ODOD; Norman Chagnon, Third Frontier Commission; Michael Camp, OSU
Writer: Gene Monteith

ABS Materials, StreamLink Software, and Thermedx may appear to have little in common. One is an advanced materials company. Another provides software to nonprofits. And the other is a biomedical firm.

Yet all three share one trait: They received early stage funds from the Lorain County Community College Innovation Fund.

Founded by the Lorain County Community College (LCCC) Foundation in 2007, the fund today serves a 21-county area in northeast Ohio and has provided $4.3 million to 60 companies in high-tech growth industries.

The fund is supported by the Ohio Third Frontier and partners that include Cleveland State University, the Great Lakes Innovation and Development Enterprise (GLIDE), JumpStart, Northeastern Ohio Universities Colleges of Medicine and Pharmacy (NEOUCOM), Stark State College, The University of Akron, The University of Akron Research Foundation, Youngstown State University and the Youngstown Business Incubator.

Tracy Green, director of the LCCC Foundation, which administers the fund, says since 2007, companies assisted by the fund have attracted more than $41 million in follow-on investments and sales and helped to create 100 new jobs.

"The Innovation Fund really serves as the front door of funding for entrepreneurs," Green says. "We see a lot that are just surfacing out of the lab or out of an 'Ah-ha' type of idea. We're the first stop after credit cards, family, friends and second mortgages."

The Innovation Fund makes two types of awards: up to $25,000 to help validate a startup's technology; and up to $100,000 to validate a new company's business model.

One of the hallmarks of the fund is a requirement that recipients help educate a college student about entrepreneurship and running a business.

"Every award we make to a company, they have to agree to provide an educational opportunity or internship to a student," Green says. "So that student is able to walk shoulder to shoulder with an entrepreneur so they understand what it means and what it takes to be involved in a startup."

The Innovation Fund's successful model was recognized in February when the college and its foundation were named as one of 10 community colleges to be part of the American Association of Community College's Virtual Incubator Network. Lorain's role is to help replicate the Innovation Fund among community colleges nationwide as part of President Obama's Startup America Initiative.

Source: Tracy Green, Lorain County Community College Foundation
Writer: Gene Monteith

Dimple Dough may seem like a funny name for a company, but it really does make sense, according to Shawn Barrieau, Dimple Dough's CEO.

"In 2004, I moved to Cleveland from Seattle with my wife and kids for a new job. With the holidays approaching, we had to think about sending gifts and pictures of the kids to relatives," he recalls. "I thought about how cool it would be if you could put a picture on a gift card. I did some research and ended up forming a company in 2006 to offer software that enables retailers to put photos on gift cards to personalize the experience. In effect, we're putting smiles on cash. Hence the name Dimple Dough."

Dimple Dough has grown considerably since then -- from two to 22 employees.

Working with processing, printing and fulfillment, and ecommerce partners, Dimple Dough now offers a comprehensive cloud-computing card management platform to help retailers and banks manage every aspect of their gift card programs.

"We offer creative features and platforms, including customization, ecommerce, smart phones, corporate cards, eGifts and social media," Barrieau explains.

Clients include American Express, Nike and AMC Entertainment.

Dimple Dough recently tackled the brave new world of virtual gift cards.

"We have a top-tier retail customer that just moved its rewards program from plastic gift cards to electronic gift cards," Barrieau says. "We did all the strategy and implementation for them and will soon be delivering more than six million eGifts to their data base. By helping them go from plastic to virtual gift cards, we're saving them millions of dollars in printing and postage costs. It's also good for the environment."

Dimple Dough receives Ohio Technology Investment Tax Credit assistance through the Ohio Third Frontier initiative, Barrieau notes.

"That has definitely helped us grow."

Source: Shawn Barrieau, Dimple Dough
Writer: Lynne Meyer

SuGanit Systems wants to be among the first to produce ethanol from cellulosic biomass � the inedible parts of plants � and the Ohio Third Frontier Commission is betting it will be successful.

In February, SuGanit, founded in Reston Va., but now growing its presence at the University of Toledo's Center for Technological Entrepreneurship and Innovation, received a $2-million Ohio Third Frontier grant to build a pilot plant using a new pretreatment process that breaks down the tougher parts of plants so that they can be converted into sugars, fermented, and made into ethanol.

It's the third Third Frontier Grant that the company has received or shared since its founding in 2006, says President and Founder Praveen Paripati.

The partnership with the University of Toledo, which developed an early technology for pre-treating cellulosic biomass, has led to continued development of the process and a collaboration that should result in a pilot plant by the end of the year, Paripati says.

Cellulosic materials, unlike edible products, typically take a long time to convert into sugars using existing methods, Paripati says.

"If we don't do some preprocessing it can take a few weeks to a few months to break the biomass down," he says. "So the trick is to find a mechanism by which you can break it down. And break it down without producing a lot of bad side effects. The innovation comes in an ionic liquid pretreatment technology that makes it possible for enzymes to break down biomass into sugars efficiently, within 24 to 36 hours."

The pilot plant is intended to scale up the technology to process about half a ton to one ton of biomass a day. 

"The next scale would probably be 40 to 50 tons a day, a scale which would end up producing a million gallons of cellulosic ethanol or other products. And a larger commercial scale would be anywhere from 500 tons to 2,500 tons a day."

The company currently has four employees at UT and at its Toledo laboratory. Additionally, Paripati says Third Frontier and U.S. Department of Energy grants have enabled SuGanit to fund three students workers. SuGanit plans plans to add eight more as it develops the pilot unit and reaches full operation.

Source: Praveen Paripati, SuGanit Systems
Writer: Gene Monteith

E3 Clean Technologies wants to turn your pee into power.

Gerardine Botte, a professor of biomolecular and chemical engineering at Ohio University, has developed technology to create energy from the ammonia found in human and animal organic waste. She is the founder of Athens-based E3 Clean Technologies and is developing her "SCR GreenBox," the product that will harness the technology for distribution, at the Ohio University Innovation Center.

Kent Shields, CEO of E3, says that the GreenBox has potential in several markets, wastewater treatment, agriculture, the military, electronics manufacturing, and power plant management.

The GreenBox works by using a patented low-energy electrolysis process that converts ammonia and urea in wastewater to hydrogen, nitrogen and pure water, says Shields. The box also produces hydrogen energy.

"This unit works similar to a battery," he says. "We break down ammonia and turn it into clean energy."

A large GreenBox that could be used by a municipal wastewater treatment facility would be about the size of a tractor trailer, says Shields. A smaller unit that might be used in a small manufacturing facility would be about the size of a refrigerator. The company estimates that the device could reduce the operational costs for reducing ammonia from wastewater by 60 percent.

E3 has received early stage funding of $350,000 from TechGROWTH Ohio, a technology funding program backed by the Ohio Third Frontier initiative. Pre-production GreenBox units could be ready by early 2012, says Shields. Within the next three years the company could hire up to 30 engineers and field technicians as it goes to market. He estimates that as many as double that number of jobs could be created through the manufacturing process for the product, for which E3 will contract with local companies.

Source: Kent Shields, E3 Clean Technologies
Writer: Val Prevish

"If you're told it's impossible to do, we're the right place to come," says Patrick Hood, CEO and president of Dayton-based Cornerstone Research Group.

Started in Hood's basement in 1997, Cornerstone is a research and development organization that takes advanced materials technology from molecule to commercial application -- what Hood calls "a for profit incubator."

Hood says the company, which has as many as 60 projects under way at any one time, bridges the gap between market needs and technology. While the company focuses on advanced materials, its solutions have been applied in virtually every industry segment except for IT and pharmaceuticals he says.

A good example of how Cornerstone works is Spintech Ventures, a Cornerstone spinoff that takes advantage of Cornerstone's patented shape memory polymer technology and innovative tooling to make complex composite parts. The technology was developed at Cornerstone, but the early stage Spintech will give it legs.

Hood says that the typical cost of a complexly shaped carbon composite part is about $1,000 per pound. But the cost of the raw materials is only $25 to $50 per pound. The rest of the cost comes from labor and tooling, he says. Spintech's technology can reduce typical production costs by 85 percent, he says.

Cornerstone recently was one of 44 businesses nationwide that received the U.S. Small Business Administration's Tibbets Award, given to companies and individuals that drive innovation and create jobs through the agency's Small Business Innovation Research program.

In November, the company received the Dayton Business Journal's Business of the Year award in the Community Supporter category for its community involvement.

Over the years, the Cornerstone and Spintech have benefited from awards from the Ohio Third Frontier initiative, Hood says. Together, both companies currently employ about 100.

Source: Patrick Hood, Cornerstone Research Group
Writer: Gene Monteith