Cincinnati : Buzz

Innovation and entrepreneurship are the engines of economic growth. For decades now, cities and communities across the United States have tried to infuse themselves with those two properties by emulating Silicon Valley, a never-ending quest to become the next Silicon Somewhere.

Brad Feld’s terrific new book, Startup Communities, takes us inside the real ecologies of innovation and entrepreneurship. Feld, co-founder of venture capital firm Foundry Group, serves on the boards of numerous high-tech companies. He recently chatted with Cities about his new book.

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A national study on high-tech jobs released Thursday shows that Ohio is quickly establishing itself as a hub of high-tech job activity. The Buckeye State is home to three of the top 25 cities for tech job growth -- more than any other state.

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Twelve years ago, the Queen City Angels were five guys who would meet at restaurants to talk about investing in local startups and who, group chairman Tony Shipley jokes, hadn’t gotten the memo that the dot-com bubble was about to burst.

Now three funds and 54 diverse companies later, the validation-stage and seed-stage investing group – the first of its kind in Ohio – has survived the dot-com bust and two recessions. Its 49 members have invested $33 million of their own money into regional startups, which has been leveraged into additional capital in excess of $200 million from other investors, and created 254 jobs.

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Recently, FirstEnergy Corp. of Akron recommended to the Ohio Legislature changes to Ohio's energy efficiency portfolio that would essentially freeze the energy efficiency mandate found in Senate Bill 221 at current levels. As currently written, Senate Bill 221 calls for Investor Owned Utilities (IOUs) to undertake energy efficiency improvements by 2025 equal to 22% of 2008's energy consumption. FirstEnergy's proposed changes would end the mandate at the less than 3% cumulative reduction required to date.

Ohio's Legislature should consider carefully any request to alter Ohio's course on energy efficiency. For many reasons, a reduction in the energy efficiency goal does not appear to be a good idea at this time.

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The Cincinnati region likely has another year of slow growth ahead in 2013, but the local economy appears to be recovering from the Great Recession more quickly than other parts of the U.S., according to a report out today.

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Chrysler Group LLC is hiring more than 1,100 new workers at its sprawling Toledo, Ohio, manufacturing complex. JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) is looking for hundreds of bankers in Columbus. And the Cleveland Clinic has been adding registered nurses at such a clip that it rented out the Cleveland Browns football stadium for a job fair.
Long an emblem of rust belt decay and despair, Ohio is now outpacing the national economy.

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The nation’s wind energy industry is growing, and that’s helping Ohio, according to a new report by an environmental group. The Natural Resources Defense Council says its new study finds that a wind farm, consisting of something like 10 wind turbines, creates a lot of jobs.

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Over-The-Rhine’s tipping point wasn’t in the form of an eco-friendly general store or gourmet popsicle shop (it now has both), but rather the renovation of the neighborhood’s cultural heart, Washington Park.

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"For investors looking to go off the beaten track to find quality deals, Ohio might be the answer," Mitchell Rosich, partner at Athenian Venture Partners, writes in VentureBeat.

"According to the most recent Ohio Venture Capital Report, venture capital activity in Ohio was up more than 80 percent in 2010, surpassing the national average, which was up only 20 percent."

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Last week, Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory and a bevy of festive accomplices re-opened beautiful, 150-year-old Washington Park, in the heart of the city’s revitalizing Over-the-Rhine district. It had been closed for 20 months’ worth of renovations and, judging by the spectacular photos, it has been worth the wait. Wow.

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A few years ago, when Bryan Jowers and Justin Stanislaw were dreaming up an app to help friends pool money to give gifts, they felt they needed to leave Houston to improve their chances of finding investors and forging connections. Instead of relocating to a Silicon Valley hotspot, they moved to Cincinnati, lured by a startup accelerator called The Brandery. As one of six startups participating in the summer of 2010, they got 12 weeks of intensive help building their product, called Giftiki.

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WALKING isn’t just good for you. It has become an indicator of your socioeconomic status. Read the full story here.