Buzz

President Barack Obama could have been speaking about Ohio's aerospace industry when he said in his State of the Union address: the nation is facing a "Sputnik moment," reports The Cincinnati Enquirer.

Now, the No. 2 technical industry in Ohio needs a new coordinated, statewide focus to counter growing international competition, budget cuts and shifting priorities. That's the central conclusion of a year-long analysis by 75 industry leaders from across the state.

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Plans are moving ahead on a new $161 million Goodyear corporate headquarters in its Ohio hometown, reports The Detroit Free Press.

The city of Akron and Summit County signed off on financing agreements Monday. That could clear the way for groundbreaking by March. Also Monday, the State Controlling Board approved $30 million in loans for the project.

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Hundreds of Northeast Ohio small-business owners will gather next week in what's being called perhaps the most important event they have held together in 40 years, reports WKYC.

The Small Business Summit, convened by COSE, the Council of Smaller Enterprises, aims to "redefine" the future of the local small business community, says Steve Millard, COSE President and Executive Director.

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Surprising as it might be, Ohio is one of several states in the Midwest where successful entrepreneurial companies are charting the way for a new economy and demonstrating that high-growth entrepreneurship can happen anywhere when a region plays on its existing strengths.

So says JumpStart CEO Ray Leach in a column published in the Huffington Post.

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The Dayton region is bolstering its image as a hub for scientific work with a surge at the Wright State Research Institute, reports the Dayton Business Journal.

Also known as WSRI, the institute quietly grew until last year, when it nearly doubled its staff to 47 workers. It plans to hire at least 10 people this year, and as many as 30 people if it keeps winning work on its current pace, said Ryan Fendley, director of WSRI.

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Ohio is not the first state that one thinks of as a hub of solar innovation, but the Midwest has increasingly become a hotbed of research and development in solar, reports Getsolar.com.

Nextronex Energy Systems, based in Toledo, recently announced that it expects sales to shoot up fourfold this year as it picks up more clients on the east and west coasts.

Read the full story here.

Creating a chemistry experiment to test on the International Space Station was one thing. Getting it into orbit was another, reports The Columbus Dispatch.

The first chore fell to the Ohio State University Heterogeneous Catalysis Research Group, which wants to know how a microscopic crystal grows in low gravity. The second task fell to a pair of aerospace engineering students.

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Ohio and other states need to reinvigorate their manufacturing sectors, and a way to do that is through creation of advanced manufacturing centers, says the Brookings Institute. 

The Brookings report, released Tuesday and reported by The Toledo Blade, says America's manufacturing base is in a slump, losing 31 percent of its jobs and seeing its contribution to gross domestic product shrink from 14 percent to just 11 percent between 2000 and 2009.

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Ohio's new economic development chief told state lawmakers Monday that Gov. John Kasich's new private job creation board of business leaders would make key information public while protecting the privacy of businesses interested in creating jobs, reports the Associated Press.

Development Director Mark Kvamme told House members salaries and bonuses of staff members will be publicized and panel members will be required to comply with a conflict of interest policy and file financial disclosure statements.

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Two Democrats from Ohio's House of Representatives have reintroduced a bill that would expand the size of a state-backed venture capital program, reports MedCity News.

House Bill No. 43 would increase by $170 million the value of tax credits that can be issued by the Ohio Venture Capital Authority (OVCA) to $550 million. A similar proposal passed the House by a vote of 98-0 in the state's last legislative session, but didn't make it to a vote in the Senate.

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A dozen companies brought 672 new jobs and $40 million in payroll to Northeast Ohio last year, with help from a regional business-attraction group and its partners, reports The Plain Dealer.

Despite the dour economy, Team NEO attracted an all-time high of 12 companies to the 16-county region last year, the economic-development group says.

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Investment in emerging Northeast Ohio companies snapped back last year, reversing a sharp drop driven by the recession, economic uncertainty and concerns about the future of the nation's health-care system, reports The Plain Dealer.

Venture capitalists and angel investors put $221 million into bright ideas and new businesses in the 21-county region last year. The flow of money more than doubled from 2009, according to data from the Venture Capital Advisory Task Force.

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The Ohio Chamber of Commerce has laid out its campaign for turning around the state's ugly economy and creating jobs, reports The Columbus Dispatch.

The chamber's "Campaign for Jobs" is built around legislative and other initiatives that chamber officials say will move the state forward at a time when the economy has been slow to recover from the recession and unemployment is stuck near 10 percent.

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Marathon Oil Corp. says it will split into two companies, separating its oil exploration and production business from its refining operation, reports The Findlay Courier.

The refining company will be known as Marathon Petroleum Corp. and will be headquartered in Findlay. It's expected to be the nation's fifth-largest refiner with operations in the Midwest, GulfCoast and Southeast.

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Researchers in Ohio have sequenced portions of the bedbug genome in an effort to find possible cracks in its growing resistance to insecticides, reports USA Today.

A team from Ohio State University lead by Xiaodong Bai has sequenced parts of the bug's genome and published the results in this week's edition of the Public Library of Science journal PLoS ONE.

Read the full story here.