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City looks to business for efficiency advice: Using Six Sigma, Fort Wayne saved $30 million

Seeking to increase its efficiency, Marion County government is enlisting a group of volunteer business experts. Their recommendations could lead to lower taxes and better service-just the sort of initiative incoming Mayor Greg Ballard says he wants to embrace. The new High Performance Government Team was approved last month by the City-County Council. Created on the recommendation of the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce, it is modeled on a similar effort in Fort Wayne, where Mayor Graham Richard, a Democrat,…

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Corporate meeting rooms become high-tech wonders: High-definition videoconferencing a growing option

Corporate PowerPoint presentations are becoming so passé. Just as consumers are craving high-definition television sets for their living rooms, corporations and hotels are taking the next step and integrating the technology into their boardrooms and meeting space. Besides videoconferencing in high definition, other high-tech gadgetry now available for both the business and hospitality sectors includes digital signage displaying messages for employees or guests, and digital room scheduling alerting when meeting rooms are in use. While some companies are upgrading to…

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ECONOMIC ANALYSIS: World War II veterans built economy into juggernaut

Veterans Day is upon us again, and the slow passing of the World War II generation sparks thought on their contributions. I will let others dwell on their considerable wartime achievements. I am an economist, not a historian, after all. Our 16 million World War II veterans emerged from conflict in the late summer of 1945 to a muchfractured world. The production of goods-where facilities had survived bombs and artillery-was almost wholly focused on the demands of war. A worldwide…

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Medical-device startup lands venture capital: Symbios bringing orphan Biomet technology to market

When large companies make innovations that don’t fit their business plan, the discovery often ends up gathering dust on a shelf. But entrepreneurs are eager to build new companies around these orphaned technologies. Four years ago, Jeffrey Alholm spotted just such an opportunity. Warsaw-based Biomet Inc. had tabled a promising anesthetic-dispensing device. So Alholm formed Symbios Medical Products LLC and cut a deal to secure its rights. Now, Symbios has a chance to commercialize the device widely, thanks to a…

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Midwest Mole tunnels into large local projects: East-side company in unusual niche makes mark

In the face of a slumping local economy in the early 1980s, several national construction firms packed up and left Indianapolis. One locally based salesman, Len Liotti, was given a choice-move to St. Louis along with his job at tunneling contractor Affholder Inc., or set out on his own. Seeing the void the big players would create when leaving, Liotti started Midwest Mole Inc. in 1982 to fill it. Twenty-five years later, the privately held firm is thriving thanks to…

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New gadget may alter radio biz

If it lives up to the hype, the Portable People Meter could revolutionize radio advertising by providing a more accurate look
at who’s listening to what. The pager-size device tracks radio-listening habits in real time, rather than relying on ratings
survey participants to remember what stations they tuned in during the course of a day.

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EDITORIAL: Tough love for struggling park: State’s high standards deserve praise

Tough love for struggling park State’s high standards deserve praise It would be easy for the state’s certified technology park initiative to degenerate into a handout program with little or no accountability. If communities in all corners of the state get a park, along with the accompanying tax benefits and grants, everyone’s happy, right? Perhaps. But for the Indiana Economic Development Corp. to deploy resources in the most potent manner, it must focus on the parks with the potential to…

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LESSONS LEARNED: Look for ways to overcome obstacles

Flory May isn’t one to back down from challenges. She’d rather work around them. Overcoming obstacles was her job as a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, and not much changed when she left the military and started her own event-planning business. Turns out, her two careers aren’t all that different. “They’re both about creating order out of chaos, bringing people together behind a common mission,” said May, 40. “In some ways, event planning can be more difficult.” Indeed, organizing a…

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Cyber sky is falling, cyber sky is falling-or not: State, IU make nice with Colorado company leasing lines for vital I-Light network linking Indiana universities

Indiana’s network for advanced university research, linked by a web of fiber optics known as I-Light, is now deemed safe by the state and Indiana University. Both have backed away from dire warnings about the network’s future that they issued earlier this month after a key partner in the network changed hands. Indianapolis-based Indiana Fiber Works, which leases hundreds of miles of fiber to I- Light under state contracts not set to expire for nine more years, was purchased Oct….

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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Is your Web site a cost or an investment?

I don’t particularly like to shop, but I like seeing how other people shop, especially online. There are always so many surprises. Of course, the big research is in e-commerce, where buyers spend money online. Studies show the number of people willing to buy online is growing steadily. The Census Bureau shows a consistently upward trendline through August 2007 (www.census.gov/mrts/www/ecomm.html). Most experts seem to believe that not only are more people throwing down their plastic electronically, but established shoppers are…

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Embattled city to get lift from resurgence of Remy:

B e a t e n – d ow n Anderson finally has some good auto-related news: Remy International Inc., headquartered in the industrial city of 60,000, is poised to survive- perhaps even thrive-thanks to a bankruptcy reorganization plan that halves its debt, along with other moves that make it more competitive. “Frankly, I think this is a great piece of information for Anderson,” Anderson Mayor Kevin Smith said of the company’s trip through bankruptcy court, which is expected to…

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INVESTING: Explore biotech universe, but choose selectively

If you look at stock market returns over a 100-year-plus time frame, the highestreturning industries have been pharmaceuticals and cosmetics. Dropping the time frame down to the last 25 years shows a different picture, with technology taking the top spot. But with more than a century of momentum, drug companies can still attract interest. Using a quantitative screen that I run every week, I noticed that biotechnology stocks have been picking up steam lately. This surprised me because the big…

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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Try your hand at running McDonald’s

It’s always fun when I find something on the Web that’s highly critical, vaguely disgusting, entertaining and informative, all at once. Mollieindustria has created an online video game at w w w. m c v i d e o game.comthat lets you run the burger giant McDonald’s, and while it’s not sparing of the company’s faults, it’s a great study in how hard it is to keep the sandwich empire going. The creators say on the site that they built…

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IU business incubator partners with Siberian school: Reciprocal visits could lead to high-tech opportunities

After unwrapping his luggage from its seal of shrink-wrap, Mark Long reviewed his notes for the upcoming seminar. He hardly needed them. Long, CEO of Indiana University’s Research and Technology Corp., has spoken many times about how academics transfer their research discoveries to the market. But this was the first time he ever delivered the speech in Siberia. The audience-a group of business and academic leaders-ultimately could help Hoosiers access a treasure-trove of Russian technologies. “They have a lot of…

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Experts look into the future of health care: Industry panelists disagree on whether current system needs radical changes

Five local industry leaders conducted a serious debate over problems and issues facing our health care system during the most recent installment in Indianapolis Business Journal’s Power Breakfast series. The event took place at the Downtown Marriott hotel on Sept. 21 The panelists: Robert Brody, president and CEO of St. Francis Hospital & Health Centers, the Indianapolis-area’s fourth-largest hospital system. Brody has been chief executive at St. Francis since 1996. Dr. Robert Mouser, a primary care physician at Cornerstone Family…

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Patent dispute threatens Suros Surgical Systems: Consultant claims key role in biopsy innovation

An intellectual property tussle dating back to the origins of Suros Surgical Systems Inc. is threatening to become more than a headache for the local medicaldevice maker. Founded in 2000, Suros was one of the fastest-growing high-tech startups in Indianapolis history. Its machine for minimally invasive breast biopsies now rings up more than $43 million in annual sales. Such success attracted deep-pocketed suitors, and Suros was acquired in July 2006 for a whopping $240 million by Bedford, Mass.-based Hologic Inc….

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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Give me the site, but hold the uninvited video

I can still remember when vacation movies were captured on 8mm film and had to be shown on jerky little projectors with hot bulbs that gave off ozone by the bucketful. Fascinating to the family that took the movies, but deadly dull to everyone else. Then along came video cameras that were much more portable and could show their movies on the family VCR. They had many advanced features, such as zoom, stop action, and even dubbing. And they were…

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EYE ON THE PIE: Good news about Indiana economy

What do most people concerned with economic development want to see? More jobs at better pay. How can we tell if we are getting there? Simply by looking at what is happening to earnings. Earnings divided by the number of jobs equals average earnings per job. Hence, with elementary school arithmetic, we can say that earnings equals the number of jobs multiplied by the average earning per job, exactly the two indicators of economic development that most folks want to…

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