Innovation + Job News

Millennium Reign Energy's vision is a world in which individuals have the opportunity to own their own hydrogen energy generation and storage systems.

The Englewood-based company came one step closer in early October, when it set up a fully-functioning hydrogen fueling station on the Dull Homestead, an alternative-energy-embracing farm near Brookville.

It's the first private station in Ohio that is designed in a way that would allow for public use anywhere, says Chris McWhinney, Millennium's senior manager and CEO.

While other individuals may choose to follow the Dull farm's lead, McWhinney recognizes that most of us don't have the resources needed to set up fueling stations in our back yards anytime soon. That's why McWhinney and partner Dave Erbaugh are currently focusing on large companies like automobile and lift truck manufacturers. 

One large automaker has shown continued interest in Millennium's patent-pending technology, McWhinney says, as has a major lift truck manufacturer that makes hydrogen fuel cell lift trucks.

"We hope to have two different types (of lift truck)," McWinney says. "One fuel cell, the other internal combustion running on hydrogen and filling up with a fueling station."

In fact, the Dull farm will soon begin using its fueling station to power a hydrogen fuel cell forklift provided by one lift truck maker, McWhinney says. The farm is also using hydrogen as a gasoline blend in a pickup truck.

The company currently derives most of its revenue from a see-through educational unit which is sold to high schools and colleges, along with materials that educate young people about the advantages of clean-burning hydrogen power.

"We're ramping up that end of our business right now to where we'd like to get to the point where we're selling 200 to 500 of those a year," McWhinney says. "If we do that, it will provide us with enough revenue to stay alive until the world catches up to us."

Source: Chris McWhinney, Mellinnium Reign Energy
Writer: Gene Monteith

In the competitive convenience drink market, a group of Cincinnati entrepreneurs have found a niche: rapid rehydration for adults.

Hoist is a new drink developed by four friends looking for a way to recover from a little too much fun after parties. At the same time they noticed that to rehydrate after hard games and workouts, a friend in the NFL would drink Pedialyte -- a drink to hydrate sick kids.

"We started using Pedialyte, and it really worked, but the taste was syrupy," said Hoist President Kelly Heekin.

The idea for Hoist was born.

Heekin, and his partners, including his entrepreneur brother Brett, visited a beverage chemist in Chicago that helped them develop something similar to a sports drink but with double the electrolytes of Gatorade to rehydrate people fast. The drink debuted in Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky last October. Now it's being sold in about 850 locations, including convenience stores and at Walgreens in Columbus and Dayton as well.

Kelly Heekin, the only partner working full time for the company, is currently working to get the drinks into grocery stores, and recently made a deal with Remke/Bigg's stores. The drink is also sold on the Hoist website.

"We're really marketing right now, working on expansion into the market and gaining more sales. We definitely want a bigger footprint in the Midwest," Heekin said.

Hoist is sold in 12 oz. cans, and is manufactured by Pri-pak in Lawrenceburg, Ind. The company is gearing up for holiday sales, and in anticipation has ordered a production run of 200,000 cans.

Source: Kelly Heekin, Hoist
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

Ohio's status as a leader in photovoltaics could shine brighter should a $46 million US Department of Energy grant come through.

The $46 million grant, expected to be announced by early 2011, would be shared between the University of Toledo and Dow Corning Corp. Earlier this year, two paired to form the Solar Valley Research Enterprise (SVRE), which submitted the grant application to the DOE with wide support from the two states' governors, Congressional rosters and private industry.

The grant would be part of $125 million in funds available though the DOE's Photovoltaics Manufacturing Initiative, which seeks to establish three national centers of expertise in the field by 2015.

Split evenly between the SVRE partners, half of the funds would be used to establish the Photovoltaics Manufacturing Initiative Center on the Toledo campus, separate from the Wright Center for Photovoltaics Innovation and Commercialization based there, but working in conjunction with it.

The Wright Center was created in 2007 and supports research and test locations located at the University of Toledo, Ohio State University and Bowling Green State University.

"I tell people the SVRE would be like the Wright Center on steroids," says Rick Stansley, co-director of the Wright Center and chairman of the UT Board of Trustees.

He estimates a direct impact of 800 jobs added to the area, and an indirect impact six or seven times as large.

The partnership has already received grants from both Ohio and Michigan, including a $3.5 million grant from Ohio Third Frontier. Along with the Ohio "node" of the SVRE, Stansley said the grant money would be used to set up a similar center in Midland, Mich., near the corporate headquarters of Dow.

Both sites would work with a cluster of private companies, government labs and universities to further solar cell development, making it more competitive with traditional energy sources. The centers would also help guide new solar panel start-ups in the northwest Ohio-southern Michigan area.

Source: Rick Stansley, Wright Center for Photovoltaics
Writer: Dave Malaska

A booster shot of venture capital will help OnShift Software flex its marketing muscle in 2011.

The Cleveland company announced this month it recently had secured $2.3 million, both from its Ohio investors -- Early Stage Partners, JumpStart Inc., North Coast Angel Fund, and Glengary LLC, -- and Draper Triangle Ventures, of Pittsburgh. Early Stage and Draper receive some of their investment dollars from the Ohio Capital Fund.

The money will be used for hiring across the board, but mostly for sales and marketing positions, CEO Mark Woodka says.

Response to OnShift's innovative staff management system has been so positive the company is convinced it needs to quickly increase the number of its representatives. OnShift had 26 customers in 2009. It will end 2010 with more than 200.

Likewise, the company began with three employees; this year it has 24 and next year, Woodka says, it will double that amount.

OnShift's system, whose key benefit is prevention of overtime costs, has been deployed mostly at long-term care facilities, such as skilled/assisted living nursing homes and retirement centers. Hospitals are a large potential source of expansion.

It's a "very green field" of a market, Woodka says, and "the need for what we do is going up over time."

Woodka credits early support from Ohio groups such as JumpStart for OnShift's fast rise.

Source: Mark Woodka, OnShift
Writer: Gabriella Jacobs

A community partnership has provided a one-stop portal for central Ohio startups, entrepreneurs and small businesses since 2007.

But CentralOhioEntrepreneurs.org thinks it could reach more central Ohio business leaders if they knew more about the site, says April McCollum.

McCollum, the website's business librarian and primary interface with site users, says more than 1,600 distinct visitors have used the website since May, when the website began keeping stats. But she says the resources available on the site to plan, start and grow a business have the potential to reach many more.

The website is a collaboration among TechColumbus, the Small Business Development Centers, the Columbus Chamber of Commerce, the Columbus Metropolitan Library and OCLC.

"The SBDC is our newest partner, and we are collaborating with the SBDC to reach out to entrepreneurs," McCollum says.

Financed and led through TechColumbus -- a Columbus-based technology business incubator -- the site is geared primarily to central Ohio businesses in the TechColumbus and Small Business Development Centers regional service areas, McCollum says. But, she says, much of the information on the site is helpful to any new or emerging small business in Ohio.

While the partners serve as information points, the site lists a host of other resources, including federal and state contacts for everything from obtaining licenses and grants to tax resources, regulations, and government contracting.

"I've seen other Ohio websites that are directories, but have never seen one that is as robust as this," McCollum says, noting that CentralOhioEntrepreneurs.org provides both a human component (McCollum) and extensive information directories.

Source: April McCollum, CentralOhioEntrepreneurs.org
Writer: Gene Monteith

I2C Technologies of North Canton has leveraged the power of new-generation internet protocol cameras to build a growing business among government and industry customers who need to closely monitor their assets.

Unlike analog cameras, which have been around since the advent of the television, IP cameras house their own microprocessors and interface with a network. Video can be stored within the unit itself for either real-time or future retrieval -- while at the same time transmitting live video to the customer from remote locations.

Jeff Doak, I2C's CEO, says he and partner Bryon Taylor, a former Perry Township detective, built the business around proprietary video management software that allows a user to program camera systems to focus on prioritized events -- like a car driving into a restricted area -- when activity is triggered by a sensor.

Some 160 customers in Ohio and surrounding states have called on I2C to install remote surveillance systems and integrate the software. But Doak says the business is poised to grow with a new line launched a year and a half ago -- a portable, self-contained four-camera unit that can monitor in detail an area the size of a football field.

"The solution we came up with uses a combination of three high-definition fixed cameras and one high-definition pan-tilt-zoom (PTZ) camera," Doak says. The PTZ camera moves and uses optics to avoid the pixilation that occurs with digital zoom cameras, he says.

I2C manufactures the housing in two flavors -- one a normal unit that can be placed on a pole, building or other location -- the other disguised as a transformer box.

The company has benefited from investments by North Coast Angel Fund and Ohio TechAngels, and Doak says "there's a pretty heavy capacity for growth."

Source: Jeff Doak, I2C
Writer: Gene Monteith

Ohio made its best showing yet in a national survey that measures the economic structure of each state. Still, there is room for improvement, according to findings in " The 2010 State New Economy Index," released last month by the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation (ITIF) and the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The report shows that Ohio rose to 25th overall, up four places from the last survey, conducted in 2007. The jump was larger than all but two other states: Kansas, which rose eight places, and Montana, which rose five.

The survey examined five main categories: knowledge jobs, globalization, economic dynamism, transformation to a digital economy, and technological innovation capacity.

Ohio made its best showing in the knowledge jobs category, where it ranked 16th nationally, up six places from 2007. Within that category, Ohio was 9th in immigration of knowledge workers and 15th in information technology jobs, a 10-place surge from 2007. 

The state rose four places in the globalization category to 24th nationally, and rose three places -- to 31st -- in the digital economy category. While Ohio remained at 25th in the innovation capacity category, it rose six places -- to 24th -- in the subcategory of non-industry investment in R&D.

The only main category in which Ohio fell in the rankings was in economic dynamism, where it fell to 38th from its previous ranking of 37th. Scott Andes, a research analyst at the ITIF and co-author of the report, says it's difficult to pinpoint reasons for the change, but noted a contributing factor could have been Ohio's drop from 17th to 25th in the number of fastest-growing firms.

"It's important to remember that the State New Economy Index measures economic structures, not performance," he says. "Some reports gauge a state on how well they have performed in the near term, yet such measurements can be volatile. While Ohio should be encouraged by its progress, it should be clear that becoming a national leader will take more than a few years."

Sources: The Innovation Technology and Innovation Foundation, and Scott Andes, ITIF research analyst
Writer: Gene Monteith

A three-year-old Columbus firm is forging a new path in branding by developing browser themes that fans can download for their favorite sports teams, news sites or other entities.

Brand Thunder, founded in 2007 by former AOL/Netscape marketer Patrick Murphy, has provided themes -- or skins -- to more than 250 brands, including 60 NCAA universities.

"Brands are looking for new ways to engage their audience," says Murphy, the company's CEO. "Great brands are building these destination sites . . . but we all know people are getting their content elsewhere. So, how do these brands embrace their users, no matter where they are on the web?"

RSS feeds, Twitter feeds and Facebook updates can be built into brand themes, providing users with up-to-the-minute information about the goings on of their favorite brands -- and driving them to that organization's website, Murphy says.

"The Huffington Post one was one of our first clients. The average reader maybe visits their site three times a day. But we found if they were using our browser, usage was about 20 times a day."

The company shares advertising and merchandising revenue with clients based on clicks from within browser. But the principal revenue comes from the search function, enhanced by a recent partnership with Bing, which becomes the default search engine when a skin is downloaded (Murphy says users can easily change to a different engine afterward).

"As soon as that person clicks a sponsored link, Bing just made a buck or two,"  Murphy says -- and Brand Thunder earns a percentage.

Two and a half years ago, Brand Thunder received $350,000 from TechColumbus, and more recently received $1 million from the Third Frontier's Ohio Innovation Loan Fund. The company is closing on a second round of investment from North Coast Angel Fund and Ohio TechAngels.

Brand Thunder currently has seven employees -- three outside of Ohio -- but expects to add up to a dozen more in the next three to four years.

Source: Patrick Murphy, Brand Thunder
Writer: Gene Monteith

The University of Dayton is getting a new tenant.

GE Aviation announced Nov. 22 that it had chosen a site on River Park Drive for its new Electrical Power Integrated Systems Research and Development Center (EPISCENTER). The $51-million, 115,000-sq.-ft facility is expected to be operational by late 2012 and attract an initial 10-15 jobs.

The facility will make GE Aviation an initial launch partner of the Ohio Hub of Innovation and Opportunity for Aerospace, assigned to the Dayton region in September 2009 by Gov. Ted Strickland.

Jennifer Villarreal, a company spokeswoman, says proximity to the University of Dayton Research Institute and Wright-Patterson Air Force Base -- as well as the Dayton region's designation an aerospace hub -- all contributed to GE Aviation's decision to locate the center on the UD campus. She says that in addition to benefiting the region's and state's economy, EPICSENTER will help GE Aviation attract new talent.

"It's an excellent catalyst for growth with new program and contracts," says Villarreal. "It's a great pipeline for talent from the University of Dayton as far as researchers, technologists, engineers and others, so that's really key to us as far as development and advancing electric power for all kinds of vehicles."

The facility will sit on eight acres and will focus on a number of markets, including electrical power starter/generation, conversion, distribution and load technologies for commercial and military aerospace applications. UD will partner with the CityWide Development Corp. to build the facility, whose construction should be completed by the third quarter of 2012. The Ohio Third Frontier has chipped in with a capital grant of up to $7.6 million.

Villarreal says it's difficult to predict job growth over time, but that some have estimated 100 to 200 "depending on future contracts and programs."

Source: Jennifer Villarreal, GE Aviation
Writer: Gene Monteith

Avtron Industrial Automation, with roots in aerospace testing equipment, is flying a little closer to the ground these days. With some help from Ohio's Third Frontier, the company is developing encoders for use in wind turbines. The encoders sense position within 360 degrees.

Worldwide, Avtron has about 400 employees, 350 of which are in Cleveland. The remaining employees work in New Hampshire and Beijing. Spurred by the $1-million Third Frontier award, Kosnik says the company plans to add another 30 jobs by 2014.

The company makes drive systems, load banks, aerospace test equipment and incremental encoders for measuring speed and position in industrial control systems. Users of the encoders include heavy industry, the wind turbine industry, and offshore oil platforms. Overall, company sales have been strong, says Don Kosnik; Director R&D (Engineering), about doubling over the last three to five years.

Over one third of Avtron's staff are technical personnel with four-year degrees or higher. Most have backgrounds in electrical and mechanical engineering, electronics or computers. Many of its product design engineers come from Avtron's Field Engineering Department.

Avtron Aerospace, Inc., Avtron Loadbank, Inc., and Avtron Industrial Automation, Inc. are part of Avtron Holdings, LLC. Their customers include 95 percent of the Fortune 500 and nearly every major airline in the world. The company has been in business since 1953. In 2007, Avtron was acquired by Morgenthaler Partners, LLC, a private equity company with assets under management of approximately $3 billion.

Source: Don Kosnik; Director R&D, Engineering
Writer: Patrick G. Mahoney

Within the past month, RSB Spine LLC of Cleveland has announced a 229-percent quarterly sales jump over the same period of 2009, gotten news of $1.5 million of new investment in the company and even showed up in the unlikeliest of places -- ABC's "Dancing With the Stars."

For the company, formed in 2001 by Cleveland-based John Redmond and a friend, California spinal surgeon Dr. Robert S. Bray, these are heady days.

Its latest product line, InterPlate, was launched in 2006 after gaining FDA approval. The InterPlate line, with four separate products to date, has quickly gained advantage over competing lines.

"It's a crowded market out there," says Redmond, the firm's CEO. "The advantage that InterPlate offers over the rest of field is that it's really an evolutionary product, which is why you're seeing the growth. The main idea is that it's modular, which means that it allows surgeons a lot of different choices in the materials used in the implant and choices in how they implant the device."

Surgeons use the implants to fuse vertebrae in the lumbar and cervical areas of the spine. Made of titanium and special graft material, it also offers quicker fusion rates, meaning the patient will heal faster.

InterPlate's popularity with spinal surgeons led to a 2009 partnership with Massachusetts-based Paradigm BioDevices, which became the exclusive distributor of the InterPlate line and has boosted sales at such an incredible rate, Redmond says.

Publicity hasn't hurt, either. The latest -- InterPlate's supporting role on ABC's hit dance contest -- came because of eventual winner Jennifer Grey's relationship with Bray. Bray has performed more than 7,500 spinal surgeries over his years in practice � and one of his patients was Grey, who underwent spinal fusion surgery just months before the show started.

"On two or three occasions, they showed an x-ray of the spinal fusion she had done in her neck," says Redmond, "and there was our implant. It was a pretty good advertisement."

Source: John Redmond, RSB Spine
Writer: Dave Malaska

A medical device startup is moving from Tennessee to Cincinnati. Along the way, it's getting up to $2 million in venture capital and a new, locally based CEO.

NanoDetection Technology, relocating from Oak Ridge, is about two years from bringing its first product to market. Its patented Biosensor Detection System finds genes, antibodies or pathogens within a biological or environmental sample. It's designed to be used in emergency rooms, doctor's offices or by food safety or law enforcement organizations. The system works quickly; it takes just minutes instead of days to detect infections or bio threats, making it a potential game changer.

The company is currently looking for lab space in Cincinnati. CincyTech, the city's nonprofit venture capital investor, was instrumental in recruiting NanoDetection. This is the first company CincyTech has attracted from outside the state, and the nonprofit is participating in what's expected to be a $2-million venture capital round.

In the first round of financing, CincyTech has pledged $250,000, Southern Ohio Creates Companies is investing $100,000, and an unnamed private investor is putting in a sizeable stake. The U.S. Department of Agriculture awarded NanoDetection a $175,000 grant to research food-safety applications.

Joel Ivers, an experienced Cincinnati area executive, will come on as the NanoDetection's new CEO. Ivers has worked in biomedical fields in Greater Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky for more than 30 years, most recently as president of Union Springs Pharmaceuticals in Northern Kentucky.

"The funds raised now will allow the company to complete clinical trials and obtain regulatory approval to launch the system in the health-care market in early 2013," Ivers says.

Source: CincyTech
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

Explosive sales growth in its high temperature composites for the aircraft industry could fuel hundreds of new jobs at Renegade Materials Corp. in Springboro near Dayton.

Laura Gray, Renegade's director of sales and marketing, says improvements in manufacturing have reduced the cost of making the high-tech, lightweight composites Renegade produces that replace heavier metal parts on both military and commercial aircraft.

Renegade will begin filling multi-million dollar orders for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program in the next several months.

"As the materials become more broadly used by the military, the commercial companies become more confident in the product," says Gray.

An expected ramp-up in sales to commercial aviation customers could add as many as 160 new jobs over the next five years at Renegade. The company currently employs 15 at its $5-million dollar manufacturing facility.

The company has hired four new employees, all former auto workers, this year through the Dayton Development Coalition and the Montgomery County Job Center. Many of its future employees could also be hired through a similar process, says Gray.

"We are working with the Montgomery County Job Center to find and re-train displaced auto workers," she says.

Opened in 2008, Renegade specializes in a unique manufacturing process for high temperature composite materials that reduces many of the toxic chemicals and volatile organic compounds that made it so expensive in the past. Owners Robert Gray and Eric Collins have spent 30 years in the aerospace industry.

Source: Laura Gray, Renegade Materials
Writer: Val Prevish

Six new digital companies are pitching to investors in Cincinnati, New York City and San Francisco after finishing an inaugural 12-week program aimed at developing promising consumer-based businesses.

These companies were housed at The Brandery, Cincinnati's first consumer marketing startup accelerator. The Brandery's founders are Cincinnati digital marketing executive David Knox and serial entrepreneur J.B. Kropp, vice president of channel development at social media branding firm Vitrue.

The companies -- ranging from an innovative online gift-giving service to a wedding vendor website -- were chosen in a competitive process. They were unveiled to about 150 potential investors, mentors, area media and fellow entrepreneurs in a Demo Day in mid-November. Each received $20,000 in financing from The Brandery in return for a 6 percent equity stake in the company.

The founders of two companies actually moved to Cincinnati from other states because of the opportunity The Brandery provided. The founders of Giftiki, which offers an online version of a greeting card with money enclosed, came from Texas. Founders of TurboBOTZ, a video game management service for consumers, also moved to the Queen City from the Chicago area.

"Both of these companies will be staying in Cincinnati now that The Brandery is over," Knox said.

The accelerator sought company founders who could prove their success potential, with big ideas, who devote a full-time effort to their company, Knox said.

"We didn't want "lifestyle" companies that would employ a few people, but instead businesses with the potential to one day employee hundreds," Knox said.

For a full roundup of The Brandery's first class, or to apply for next year's class, go the The Brandery's website.

Source: Dave Knox, The Brandery
Writer: Feoshia Henderson

ButylFuel believes bio-butanol may be the best green replacement for gasoline or diesel -- but first, it has to bring the price down.

The Columbus company is using a new strain of bacterium developed by Shang-Tian Yang, professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering at Ohio State University, to turn feedstock into butanol, bypassing the petroleum refining process through which the product is now made.

ButylFuel is currently running a pilot plant in nearby Gahanna to prove its technology and find new ways to make the fuel commercially viable, says Tom Grote, ButylFuel's chief financial officer. Grote, whose family owns Donatos pizza and Grote Company, says his family bought ButylFuel because "we're very interested in green initiatives."

Founded by Dave Ramey as Environmental Energy in the early 1990s, the company says butanol has big advantages over ethanol. Ethanol is corrosive and can't be shipped through a pipeline. It must be mixed with gasoline to be used in current engines, while butanol can be used in a blend or by itself. And butanol has about the same energy content as gasoline, while ethanol has only about a third.

But commercially produced butanol, used primarily as an industrial solvent, costs between $3.50 and $7 a gallon using today's production methods. Grote says the company is at least a year a way from building a demonstration plant that would produce a commercial product using cleaner, cheaper processes.

Grote credits Ramey, now the company's chief technology officer, with helping to educate consumers (he showed butanol could be used as a drop-in substitute for gasoline by filling his '92 Buick with the fuel) and lawmakers, who wrote butanol into the 2007 federal energy bill as part of the nation's renewable fuels standards.

The company, in tandem with Yang, has benefited from Ohio Third Frontier funding, but "we're aggressively partnering with folks to try to accelerate development," Grote says. "We are definitely willing to take on a strategic partner who would be willing to invest as we grow this."

ButylFuel currently employs six.

Source: Tom Grote, ButylFuel
Writer: Gene Monteith