A push for nanotechnology

February 28, 2007 at 7:32 pm | In business, community, education, future, government, innovation, north carolina, policy, technology | Leave a Comment

A coalition from Greensboro is preparing to ask the legislature for $65 million in funding for a Joint School of Nanoscience and Nanoengineering at UNC-G and NC A&T. From the proposal:

[S]tudents will train under premier, highly accomplished scholars in Nanoscience and Nanoengineering, giving them a competitive edge in the biotechnology industry. JSNN will offer a joint interdisciplinary Ph.D. degree and a joint professional science master’s degree (M.S.). Once fully developed, the training, research and development activity associated with this project will have an estimated economic impact of $20 million per year within the Triad region.

The coalition is also asking the legislature money for the International Civil Rights Center and Museum and a science center.

Startupping

February 28, 2007 at 7:26 pm | In business, entrepreneurship, innovation, resource, technology | Leave a Comment

Last week, web innovator Mark Fletcher launched Startupping, a new site aimed at providing advice for Internet entrepreneurs. So far, the content has been really strong. In addition to a blog, which features lessons and analysis from all kinds of business veterans, there is also an entrepreneurship wiki, forums for discussion, and aggregators which pull in content from VCs, angel investors, and business people.

Farming as tourism

February 27, 2007 at 9:02 pm | In business, culture, entrepreneurship, farming, food, innovation, north carolina, rural development, tourism | Leave a Comment

The New York Times last week surveyed a new trend for family farms — turning to tourism to help pay the bills. The numbers from the story showing just how high the bills have gotten are particularly compelling:

[A] recent study by the Leopold Center for Sustainable Agriculture at Iowa State University indicates that over the last 30 years, farm income has remained flat while farm expenses have more than tripled.

To balance their ledgers, many farmers have become dependent upon government subsidies and income from second jobs known as “off-farm activities.” Statistics from the Economic Research Service, an agency within of the Department of Agriculture, provide a snapshot of this situation. In 1977, family farmers had an average household income of $14,867 — $10,636 of that from off-farm activities. By 2005, the gap between profit sources had widened, with the average income at $81,420 and off-farm income equaling $66,782.

Growing up on a family farm, I’m all too well aware of the operating costs. Our primary crop was tobacco, and in less than a decade, I watched the market for that change dramatically. My father recognized the trend early and chose to diversify in at least six different ways.

But a neighbor (and I say neighbor in the country sense — they live about 18 miles away) took exactly the tack mentioned in this story. Every year, they plant a huge crop of corn, and just before fall, they carve a maze out of the field. They charge families, school groups, churches, and clubs $8 a person, and sell tickets for three hours every night. The McKee Farm has had stories written about it in newspapers all over the state, and what they’ve managed to do business wise is nothing less than impressive.

States and innovation

February 27, 2007 at 6:13 pm | In business, community, education, entrepreneurship, government, north carolina, policy, trends | Leave a Comment

More about geography and innovation, this time from the Christian Science Monitor. Governors and local leaders are finding it increasingly important to set up programs that promote innovation. The idea is that for a state economy to be successful in the future, it will need to have strategies that constantly promote new industries and ideas. One particularly interesting graf:

Last year, researchers at the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland and the city’s Case Western Reserve University studied various factors that might account for differences in per capita income among the 50 states. Their conclusion: Income differences are generally explained by different supplies of knowledge, as measured by patents and number of high school and college degrees.

North Carolina has the tools to do well in this new environment because we have a world class university system, we invested in the Research Triangle Park years before it other states made similar moves, and we are constantly looking for ways to improve primary education as well.

Self-learning galore

February 27, 2007 at 6:08 pm | In culture, education, innovation | Leave a Comment

I’ve just become a big fan of the MIT OpenCourseWare program. Made possible through a series of grants, the university is making all the materials from a number of its course available online, for free. And by all the materials, I mean the entire course — you can find the syllabus, the lectures, the quizzes, everything. It’s all there, available under a Creative Commons license. You can even subscribe to department RSS feeds, so you can see when new courses get added. All in all, very cool for anyone interested in self-learning.

Emerging Tar Heel prodigy

February 26, 2007 at 6:38 pm | In ETHL, community, fundraising, nonprofit, north carolina, organizing | Leave a Comment

The Triangle Business Journal profiles Mason Park — an 11 year-old at West Millbrook Middle School — who has raised more than $44,000 for a series of charities over the last five years. From the piece:

As a result of his fundraising success, Mason has been tapped by a number of companies, including Sheraton, Hyatt and San Antonio, Texas-based Zachary Construction Corp., as a motivational speaker to encourage employees to increase their commitments to philanthropy.

On Feb. 13, he was named one of two North Carolina students to be selected as 2007 youth volunteers of the year by Prudential Financial. In May, he will travel to Washington, D.C., where 10 national youth volunteers of the year will be selected from more than 100 state honorees.

The American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association and the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society are among the organizations that have benefited from Park’s generosity.

Fact of the week

February 26, 2007 at 6:32 pm | In business, entrepreneurship, environment, fact of the week, technology, trends | Leave a Comment

Last year, venture investment in clean technologies rose from $1.6 billion in 2005 to $2.9 billion in North America (source).

Building a culture of innovation

February 26, 2007 at 6:26 pm | In business, culture, education, innovation, international, trends | Leave a Comment

The Indian Institutes of Technology — highly-competitive technical schools situated throughout the country — have been turning out lots of highly-trained engineers every year, and because of them, India has the fastest growing tech-economy in the world. But the IITs have long been derided for lacking an ingrained culture of innovation. Their graduates are among the best engineers in the world, but surprisingly few of them become entrepreneurs.

Pushed by alums working for some of the top companies in Silicon Valley, the IITs are creating business incubators aimed not just at starting new businesses but at targeting some of the country’s most complicated social problems. Already, one of the programs has helped to launch:

– Midas Communications Ltd., one of the earliest Tenet companies, has grown to deliver telecom services to millions across India using breakthrough wireless routing. The company employs 600 in Chennai and does business in 25 other countries.

– Oops Private Ltd. is creating ways to bring video conferencing to remote villages, using the low-end technologies available. Oops has figured out a way to do video conferencing on bandwidth as low as 20 Kbps, allowing kids to attend classes with teachers hundreds of miles away.

– ReMeDi Ltd. is using similar bandwidth optimization technology to help villages that have no doctors. And they’re delivering the systems for the equivalent of $250.

Taking on climate change

February 26, 2007 at 6:02 pm | In business, environment, future, government, innovation, north carolina, politics, technology, trends | Leave a Comment

North Carolina’s Legislative Commission on Global Climate Change — a 34-member group of leaders from various fields across the state — last week released a series of recommendations for energy efficiency that they hope will push North Carolina into a leading position in the fight against global climate change.

[The panel] approved ideas ranging from increasing a fee on utility bills for efficiency programs, to higher power-saving standards for buildings and appliances, to a variety of education programs for consumers, schoolchildren and college students.

Any recommendations the commission makes will have to be approved by the state government, but the new Speaker of the House, Joe Hackney, serves as the group’s co-chair, so they’re not without clout.

Feel good doughnuts

February 26, 2007 at 6:01 pm | In business, food, innovation, north carolina | Leave a Comment

In an effort to lure back diet-conscious customers, Krispy Kreme is set to introduce a 100 percent whole wheat doughnut. Just 180 calories of sticky, glazed goodness.

Good roads state

February 26, 2007 at 5:44 pm | In government, infrastructure, north carolina, policy, urban planning | Leave a Comment

North Carolina Board of Transportation is set to consider investing $110 million in highway improvement projects in 20 counties throughout the state.

Migration and North Carolina

February 24, 2007 at 7:32 pm | In business, community, culture, demographics, future, north carolina, trends | Leave a Comment

Today, in a conversation with friends, I found myself talking about an article the Charlotte Observer published earlier this year. It’s a piece I’ve been thinking about ever since I first saw it, so though it’s a little old, I thought I’d mention it here.

Since 1950, the population of Buffalo, New York has declined by more than half, to around 280,000 people. In the past 7 years, Charlotte has added 46,000 residents. Those two events aren’t unrelated. In a long analysis of data from the Internal Revenue Service, the Observer has found that a significant chunk of upstate New York’s population has moved to the Charlotte region:

It shows that Mecklenburg County is the No. 1 out-of-state destination for people leaving Erie County, home of Buffalo. It’s the No. 2 out-of-state destination from Monroe County, home to nearby Rochester.

The data also show strong migration from upstate New York to Union, Cabarrus, Iredell and York counties. (snip)

U.S. Census Bureau data show New York is the No. 1 source of newcomers to the nine-county Charlotte region from outside the Carolinas. An estimated 13,000 people move here from the Empire State annually.

Gastronomic tourism

February 22, 2007 at 10:09 pm | In culture, north carolina, tourism | Leave a Comment

A new survey ranks North Carolina as one of the top spots in the country for wine and culinary-related travel.

Wither the superstar city?

February 22, 2007 at 10:03 pm | In business, community, culture, demographics, north carolina | Leave a Comment

Writing in the Wall Street Journal, historian and author Joel Kotkin argues that long-term economic and demographic trends suggest that the future of American urbanism lies outside elite cities like New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. Instead, younger and more affordable cities (notably Charlotte) have created the most new jobs and gained the most new citizens.

[C]ompanies depend not only on elite MBAs but upon on the collective skills of middle managers, technicians and skilled laborers. Most companies also tend to be more mindful of basic costs, taxes and regulations than the average hedge-fund manager…

Houston companies tend to staff heavily locally; this is one reason the city was able to replace New York and other high-cost locales as the nation’s unchallenged energy capital. Another example of this trend is Charlotte’s rise as the nation’s second-ranked banking center in terms of assets, surpassing San Francisco, Chicago and Los Angeles, indeed all superstar cities except New York.

Surviving a new business

February 22, 2007 at 12:26 pm | In business, culture, entrepreneurship, north carolina | Leave a Comment

The Triangle Business Journal is starting a new series called Project Survival. Over the next year, they are going to follow Ali Ciampa and Sally Grogan as the pair starts a new business in Cary — Ciao Bella Boutique. The first story in the series is up on the website. Though Ciampa and Grogan have no experience running a business, they were able to find financing:

Grogan and Ciampa had ponied up $10,000 of their own savings for the startup, and Wachovia agreed to a $130,000 promissory note to finance the cost of kick-starting the business.

So far, their store is doing better than projected — with average sales topping $9,300 per week through fall of last year.

Triangle Business Journal will be along for the ride as Ciampa and Grogan take their best shot at the dog-eat-dog retail industry. With access to the inner workings of Ciao Bella Boutique, we’ll examine what makes a first-year business work and, at times, what doesn’t. Look for Project Survival stories to appear on the third Friday of April, June, August, October and December.

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