Businesses that Benefit from Community Investment in R&D
Excerpted from Trade & Industry Development
By Jennifer Alten

From individual companies to small communities to entire states, research and development is the fuel behind business drivers and economic engines.

Wisconsin Stays at the Forefront in R&D

Janesville, in southern Wisconsin on the Illinois border, is on the forefront of nuclear medicine. Two companies, SHINE Medical Technologies and NorthStar Medical Radioisotopes, have both announced plans to build facilities in the area. The companies want to fill a void expected when two other nuclear reactors, located in Canada and the Netherlands, that use highly enriched uranium to produce isotopes are taken out of service in 2016 and 2020. NorthStar and SHINE Medicare are two of three U.S. companies supported by the National Nuclear Security Administration as it pushes for a more reliable and diverse supply of Mo-99, a medical isotope primarily used for detecting heart disease and determining stages of cancer progression.

SHINE Medical Technologies signed a $125 million deal to build a $100 million manufacturing plant on Janesville’s south side. When it opens in 2017, the plant is expected to produce more than a quarter of world supply for Mo-99, the most commonly used isotope in nuclear medicine. SHINE plans to use low-enriched uranium in a series of eight accelerators to produce the isotope, which is used in more than 30 kinds of diagnostic imaging procedures and more than 40 million medical imaging tests each year. SHINE expects to bring at least 125 high-paying jobs to the area.

In July 2014, NorthStar Medical broke ground on a 50,000 square-foot facility in nearby Beloit that will house the company’s headquarters and activities related to the production of the Mo-99. Within the next four years, NorthStar expects to have approximately 165 employees working at its Beloit corporate campus. The company signed a letter of intent with GE Healthcare as a distributor of Mo-99.

According to James Otterstein, Rock County Economic Development manager, “This is an exciting project that is contributing toward reshaping, as well as redefining, the economic landscape of the Janesville-Beloit MSA . Rock County’s economy in increasingly populated with firms that are developing and conducting industry leading technology applications.”

Read the full article.

As published on channel3000.com
By Neil Heinen

A lot of the talk about diversity lately has focused on the moral imperative of racial justice and ending disparities and rightfully so. But there’s no reason we can’t – at the same time – continue to embrace the 21st century reality that diversity is an asset no responsible economic development strategy can succeed without.

To its credit, the Madison Region Economic Partnership has aggressively embraced this concept and we think the entire region will benefit.

MadREP is inviting businesses in its eight-county region to participate in a new initiative “designed to measure, recognize and improve workplace diversity and inclusion practices.”

We like the mix of encouragement, accountability and recognition. We also know that New Economy businesses, and the people who start them, consider diversity an essential component of decisions like where to grow a business and how to attract talent.

MadREP’s forward thinking workplace diversity and inclusion plan is smart, timely and just plain right.

Read the full article and view the video here.

Madison Region Economic Partnership (MadREP) announces a new initiative designed to measure, recognize, and improve workplace diversity and inclusion practices.  

The inclusion of a diverse workforce is vital to the sustained economic growth of our region, and assessing the progress of diversity and inclusion efforts by Madison Region employers is a critical first step in improving our practices over time. This initiative is an outcome of MadREP’s Advance Now Strategy, which identifies Leadership & Diversity as one of its five planks for economic growth in the region. 

“The Madison Region’s changing population presents a momentous opportunity to engage employers around workplace diversity and inclusion practices,” notes Paul Jadin, president of MadREP. “We recognize the critical role that diversity and inclusion play in business and economic growth across our rural, suburban, and urban communities. This initiative is an important milestone toward advancing economic opportunity for all current and prospective employees.” 

Madison Region businesses are invited to participate in a survey that captures quantitative and qualitative data about workforce demographics, supplier diversity programs, and community engagement.  Individual workplace responses will remain anonymous, and will become part of an aggregated data set for the region.  

This initiative will allow the Madison Region to establish benchmarks and to begin taking the necessary steps to becoming a model for economic inclusion by promoting the advancement of a diverse and inclusive workforce. In addition, the initiative will:

• Give companies a vehicle to self-assess their strengths and opportunities
• Identify resources available through MadREP for companies seeking to improve diversity and inclusion practices
• Establish a snapshot of the region’s workforce demographics
• Track initiatives and best practices for the advancement of economic inclusion 

This effort was developed through the input of MadREP’s Leadership & Diversity workgroup, a committee of 20 professionals from the private and public sectors charged with steering implementation of the Advance Now Strategy’s Leadership & Diversity plank.

“Successful regions across the country have proactively measured and improved workplace diversity and inclusion practices for quite some time,” comments Anne Carter, chair of the Leadership & Diversity workgroup and Director of Corporate Diversity & Inclusion at Alliant Energy. “This effort builds upon best practices to position the Madison Region toward becoming a model for economic inclusion while reinforcing the impact of diversity within businesses.”

The Madison Region Workplace Diversity & Inclusion Survey can be found online at www.surveymonkey.com/s/MadisonRegionWorkplaceDiversity. 

Surveys should be completed by February 28, 2015. Aggregated results will be shared at the Madison Region’s Economic Development & Diversity Summit on May 14, 2015. The event will be co-hosted by MadREP and the Urban League of Greater Madison.   

Upon completion of the survey and delivery of results, participating companies will have the opportunity to identify resources available through MadREP to improve their diversity and inclusion practices, namely through a partnership with The Davis Group, a local firm providing contract services in the recruitment and retention of a diverse workforce and cultural competency training. 

 

Excerpted from xconomy.com
By Jeff Engel

Early in his career, Mark Bakken never imagined himself as an investor in startups. But the serial entrepreneur has lately become one of the more active angel investors in Madison, WI.

Bakken says he purposefully avoided taking money from outside investors for his first two startups, software consulting companies Goliath Networks, founded in 1993, and Bedrock Managed Services & Consulting, born 11 years later. He did fine without the help of angel investors or VCs, growing both businesses to millions of dollars in annual revenue before selling them for undisclosed prices to Integrated Information Systems and Tushaus Computer Services, respectively.

But in hindsight, Bakken wishes he had taken outside investment dollars for those two companies, as he did with his third startup, Nordic Consulting Partners, the fast-growing Madison-based electronic health records consultant.

Nordic, founded in 2010, has grown to more than 400 employees and raised more than $38 million from investors including HLM Venture Partners, SV Life Sciences, Health Enterprise Partners, Summit Partners, and Kaiser Permanente Ventures, according to the 2014 Wisconsin Portfolio. Nordic’s investors have been “wonderful” to work with—and key to the company’s growth, Bakken says.

Last year—20 years after founding Goliath—Bakken began investing some of his personal wealth into Madison-area healthtech startups. He has invested in 15 companies, eight of them in healthcare—including Healthfinch, Forward Health Group, Catalyze, Moxe Health, 100health, and HealthMyne.

This year, he decided to up his game and form a small venture fund focused on local healthtech startups. At the end of this month, he will step down as CEO of Nordic to run Madison HealthX Ventures, which will be located near the Capitol Square in the same office as 4490 Ventures and American Family Ventures, Bakken says.

Bakken announced his fund last month, and he has been lobbying potential backers in the hopes of raising $10 million to $20 million for it. So far, he has secured around $4 million, including $1 million of his own money, $1 million from Nordic, and a commitment of at least $2 million from the new state-backed Badger Fund of Funds, he says.

His goal is to make the first investment by the end of the first quarter in 2015. Madison HealthX Ventures will initially put $300,000 to $500,000 in each of its portfolio companies, while reserving some of its pot for follow-on investments, Bakken says. It will primarily target Madison startups, but could also consider companies located around Wisconsin and outside the state.

With Nordic, Bakken has seen firsthand the opportunities in healthtech. Hospitals and other healthcare providers have invested heavily in moving patient records from paper to digital formats, spurred in part by government incentives. That has been a boon for companies like Epic Systems, based near Madison in Verona, WI, and software consultants like Nordic.

The next wave of successful healthtech companies, Bakken says, will be those that create software that helps hospitals and clinics operate more efficiently—an imperative because changes in government reimbursement are putting pressure on healthcare providers to cut costs while boosting quality of care. Those are the types of companies his fund will target, and he thinks he’ll continue to find promising startups in the Madison area.

“Madison is positioned probably better than anybody just because we have a lot of people that work in the healthcare IT world, just because of Epic right in our backyard,” Bakken says. “They talk to customers, they know what the challenges are.”

Bakken and other local business leaders believe Madison has a shot at becoming a nationally recognized healthtech hub, thanks to the presence of Epic, which employs more than 8,000 people locally; the turnover at Epic, which results in some former employees starting new healthtech companies; and the talented computer science graduates coming out of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, among other factors.

One of the missing ingredients, in Bakken’s mind, is an adequate local supply of early-stage capital. But more than that, new healthtech entrepreneurs need mentors and investors who know the healthcare industry and can make the introductions to healthcare executives, which are key in a field that is often seen as slow to adopt new technology. Those are two challenges—capital and connections—he wants to help address with Madison HealthX Ventures.

Read the full article.

Excerpted from Janesville Gazette
By Jim Leute

A Georgia-based recycling and packaging company plans to build a $52 million manufacturing facility in Beloit that will employ 140 people.

Pratt Industries said Friday it will build a 350,000-square-foot plant to make corrugated boxes in Beloit’s Gateway Business Park.

Construction will start in spring with the plant becoming fully operational by January 2016.

Gov. Scott Walker said Pratt considered sites in three other Midwest states before settling on Wisconsin and Rock County.

Pratt is the United States’ fifth-largest corrugated packing company and is the world’s largest, privately held, 100-percent-recycled paper and packaging company.

It has more than 4,400 employees at manufacturing facilities in more than 20 states.

“This is a memorable day for our company,” said Pratt Chairman Anthony Pratt. “This plant will be our first ever in the great state of Wisconsin and is a perfect fit with our aggressive growth strategy to increase our manufacturing footprint and capabilities in the Midwest.

“We can’t wait to open for business here, and I’d like to thank Gov. Walker as well as officials at the Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. and representatives of both Rock County and the city for Beloit for their can-do attitude and willingness to welcome and work with new businesses.”

The deal was facilitated with a combination of state and local resources from the city, the Greater Beloit Economic Development Corp., WEDC, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation and Alliant Energy.

Pratt said that not only would the Beloit facility boast the most advanced technologies in the packaging industry, it would also be a showcase for environmental responsibility.

Aside from using 100 percent recycled paper in its box-making process, the plant will use the latest in water reclamation technology and will eventually reduce discharge into the local sewer system to zero, he said.

Local officials said partnerships between state and local governments and the private sector were key to bringing the project to Beloit.

“This announcement underscores the necessity of having an efficient and effective economic development team,” said James Otterstein, Rock County’s economic development manager. “Successfully facilitating projects of this scale requires technical as well as complementary financial tools.”

Read the full article.