Knotice delivers direct digital marketing software solutions to marketers across a variety of industries. Direct digital marketing is interactive marketing that is “addressable,” having the ability to identify the recipient of a marketing message. Knotice is working to change the way online marketers conduct programs to help them grow revenue, reduce cost and provide their customers with meaningful and relevant online experiences.

Congratulations Knotice!

For the second time in three years, the National Business Incubation Association has selected Summit Data Communications as a finalist for Outstanding Incubator Client in the Technology Category. The NBIA advances business incubation and entrepreneurship. Each year, the NBIA Incubation Awards honor business incubation programs and client companies that exemplify the best of the industry.

Summit is a client of the Akron Global Business Accelerator in Akron, Ohio, which won the NBIA’s Incubator Innovation Award in 2008. For four years, the Akron incubator’s mentoring and business assistance have helped Summit establish and maintain a healthy business.

Summit also has been named as a recipient of a Crain’s EDGE Award. EDGE is an organization that enhances economic development in Northeast Ohio through innovation and entrepreneurship. EDGE helps value-creating companies succeed though education, innovation, and relationship-building, while cultivating a culture that is supportive of entrepreneurial ventures. An EDGE metric identifies the Northeast Ohio companies that are creating the most value for themselves and their communities.

“Northeast Ohio is our home, and we are dedicated to creating value here,” said Chris Bolinger, Summit’s VP of Sales and Marketing. “By providing market-leading products and high service levels to a worldwide customer base, we are creating rewarding jobs not just at Summit but at partner companies in our region.”

Last year, in the teeth of the recession, Summit increased staff by 30%. This year, Summit is continuing to grow by addressing customer requirements for reliable and secure Wi-Fi connectivity in challenging environments around the world.

Syncro Medical Innovations – YBI

Add yet one more “award winning” company to YBI’s portfolio.

Congratulations to the entire Syncro Medical Innovations team for being named one of just three statewide finalists for the Ohio Chamber of Commerce’s annual Excellence in Entrepreneurship Award.

Syncro was honored for their groundbreaking research that resulted in Blue Tube™, a cutting-edge enteral feeding tube that is rapidly guided to proper placement by external magnets.

To  learn more about this wonderful life saving medical innovation, visit www.syncromedical.com.

Read the full story here on Ohio.com.

Vadxx Energy LLC, who are developing a process to take plastic refuse and other petroleum-based waste and turn it back into synthetic crude oil and natural gas, also had an opportunity to overview their technology to the Governor, who saw “no downside” to the proposed partnership, where the District and Vadxx would share profits.

It’s the first time the Cleveland medical center has made a pre-seed investment in a start-up company, according to the center’s release. Fluence Therapeutics is housed at the Akron Global Business Accelerator, which is part of the city’s Biomedical Corridor District.

Cleveland attorney and entrepreneur Warren Goldenberg has become Fluence Therapeutics’ founding chief executive, said Stephen Behm, technology management director at the Center for Clinical Research and Technology UH Case Medical Center. “He has a successful track record with early stage companies,”  including CardioInsight and Imalux, that were developed at Case or University Hospitals, Behm said in the release.

Read the entire article on the MedCity News site.

The Governor made the remarks when he was visiting Echogen Power Systems (formerly ReXorce Thermionics) in the accelerator.  Echogen is developing an engine that turns the heat thrown off by industrial processes into useful electricity.  The company, a tenant of the Akron Global Business Accelerator, employs 20 people, many of them engineers at ”good paying” jobs, Strickland said.  Echogen expects to hire an 45 to 65 office employees and 50 to 75 manufacturing employees in the next five years.

Echogen received a $4.3M Third Frontier grant in 2008 that their CEO credited with shaving a year and a half off their development timetable.  The company has also attracted millions of dollars from other investors, including the regional business development group JumpStart Inc.

The full story is available over on Ohio.com’s website as reported by Paula Schleis.  Paula can be reached at 330-996-3741 or pschleis@thebeaconjournal.com. Follow her on Twitter at http://twitter.com/paulaschleis.

]]> http://neoinc.org/2010/01/28/q-where-is-the-future-being-created/feed/ 0 http://neoinc.org/2009/12/15/akron-tenant-stretches-its-wings/ http://neoinc.org/2009/12/15/akron-tenant-stretches-its-wings/#comments Tue, 15 Dec 2009 15:21:12 +0000 NEOinc http://neoinc.org/?p=501 Akron Global Business Accelerator tenant rexorce Thermionics, while still a tenant of the accelerator, has also established it’s own headquarters in Akron and has big plans for the coming year, as reported recently by Crain’s Cleveland Business:

• The 18-person company expects to grow out of its 18,000-square-foot headquarters by January 2011
• The company in January is scheduled to install a 250-kilowatt pilot version of its Thermafficient heat engine at a power generating plant owned by a large utility
• In about a year, rexorce aims to install a 6-megawatt version of its heat engine at an industrial site

‘This test will confirm all of the pieces of the system, prove its vastly superior accuracy, and serve as a demonstration site for potential customers and investors,” Chief Operating Officer Jay Breeding said in the latest newsletter from JumpStart, a business development group that has invested in the startup.

JumpStart noted that by the end of the year, ”the company will have taken a technology from idea to commercialization in 17 months. By doing this, InSeT will provide the nearly 2,000 underground mines in the U.S. with a superior way to comply with a government-regulated act and potentially save lives.”

At the Team NEO Economic Development Impact Awards last week, ten awards were handed out recognizing various organizations and initiatives for their positive economic impact our our region.  Here’s a recap of the winners in the various categories:

• Asset Creation: Akron’s BioInnovation Institute
• Business Attraction: Youngstown-Warren Regional Chamber
• Business Expansion: Ashland Area Council for Economic Development, Ashland County, Jackson Twsp.Ashland Area Council for Economic Development, Ashland County, Jackson Twsp.
• Business Retention: City of Akron, Greater Akron Chamber, County of Summit, Summit County Port Authority
• Foreign Investment: Growth Partnership for Ashtabula County
• Fostering Entrepreneurship: Lorain County Community College Foundation
• Marketing Cleveland Plus: Cohen & Co.
• Minority Business Development: City of Lakewood & LakewoodAlive
• Public-Private Partnership: Maple Street Commerce LLC. City of North Canton, and Stark Development Board
• Workforce Development: Advanced Manufacturing & Engineering Center of Cuyahoga Community College

After about the forth or fifth award, I lost count of all the jobs created, millions of dollars invested, and businesses attracted.  Rest assured it was an impressive total.

Three things really stuck out during the awards.  First – the overall coverage of the region by the winners.  From Youngstown to Lorain; from Ashtabula to Canton, great things are happening all over the place.  Second – many of the winners were collaborations themselves, providing examples to others on how to partner and accomplish great things.  Finally – the list above is simply the recognized winner in each category.  For all ten categories, there were another 2-3 finalists in the running (and easily another fifty or so overall submissions).

There is a lot of positive change happening in the region, particularly around entrepreneurial activities and economic development.  NEOinc follows several regional blogs reporting on these topics.  Sometimes the posts shine a spotlight nationally (or internationally) on the region.  Every month we publish a short list of some of the stories we’ve noticed that embody the spirit of achievement, growth and change in our region.

Congratulations to all the winners, finalists and everyone submitting an entry.  In the spirit of Team NEO’s awards, congratulations to our region for recognizing the great work we’ve all done over the past year.  Now, let’s look at what happened last month.

Reflective of the Team NEO awards, this month’s recap is all over the region and state, and definitely highlights job creation, collaboration and economic development of all types.  Here then is NEOinc’s May recap of the articles we feel speak to the growth and positive change that is happening quietly, every day, in our region.

May ‘09 Recap

• CWRU’s med school receives $3M grant
• Ohio’s leadership in logistics
• 125 new jobs
• Huntington Bank, State of Ohio team up for $1B business loan program
• Ohio’s wind turbine (our very own) makes it’s debut
• Beck Center reaches fundraising goal (but you can still help!)
• OEConnections inks deal with Navistar
• Orrville company wins military contract
• Two Northeast Ohio firms team up for $33M Nasa contract
• State gives $8M to Summit, Stark
• Medina collaboration building fiber network
• High Tech jobs increasing in Northeast Ohio
• KeyBank breaking ground in Akron
• Entrepreneur’s EDGE highlights companies pumping $1.6B into the economy
• $9.1M grant to Cleveland Clinic’s Lerner Research Institute
• Jo-Ann Stores first quarter profits nearly triple
• New orders for manufactured goods up by largest amount in 16 months
• Regional Talent Network unveils employment website (another take)

This list certainly isn’t meant to be exhaustive, merely a representative sample of some of the more positive articles we saw throughout the month.  We want to hear from you too! Please use the comment box below to share your thoughts with us here at NEOinc and our other readers.  Come on, you know you want to.

We’re also looking for other blogs to follow that report on positive entrepreneurship and economic development activities throughout Northeast Ohio.  You can review the list below of the blogs we currently follow.  Please post any additional recommendations via the comment box at the end of this post.

NEOinc’s blog reports regularly on entrepreneurial activities within the region, news and successes within the five incubators making up our collaborative, and resources available throughout Northeast Ohio.  If you found this post useful, please consider subscribing to our blog.  Our “Connect With Us” page will give you all the information you need to subscribe via your RSS reader or receive E-Mail updates.

Sources

NEOinc watches the following regional blogs.  Please use our “Contact Us” page, or the comment box below, to recommend a blog not on the list.

• Advance Northeast Ohio – the online home of our region’s economic action plan, which was inspired by Voices & Choices. Learn about the actions our region is taking to grow our economy and engage in conversations that shape the plan and evaluate our performance.
• Brewed Fresh Daily- topical, wide-ranging, and sometimes irreverant, George Nemeth’s blog is a clearinghouse for the pulse of Northeast Ohio.
• Cleveland Plain Dealer’s business blog
• Crain’s Cleveland
• NorTech – NorTech leads the region’s technology based economic development agenda. By supporting and nurturing Northeast Ohio’s most promising technology projects and initiatives, they help to create new technology industries and make the region ’s economy more globally-competitive.
• Ohio Means Business – The OBDC blog is a chance for Ohio executives to share their perspective on how locating in Ohio has enabled them to achieve both their professional and personal aspirations without having to sacrifice one for the other.

• Remote-monitoring systems with diverse applications; e.g. allowing medical professionals to monitor the health of and speak to a home-based patient using a watchlike device
• Products around a terahertz radiation power source which dramatically amplifies current detection capabilities.   One application is a scanning device that would pick up trace elements of explosives from a distance, perhaps ending the need for airline procedures such as passenger shoe removal.

Congratulations AGBA – two exciting new technology companies creating jobs in our region.  Read the entire story here.