The Lansing region certainly doesn’t lack brainpower or creativity. Everywhere Capital Gains turned this year, we found an innovator—someone rethinking a technology or opportunity, who understood the needs of the New Economy.
A short article can’t do justice to all the region's important innovators, so we tried to pick some companies and ideas that may have flown under your radar.
Listed in no particular order, here are Capital Gains' Top 10 Innovations of 2008.
AFID TherapeuticsWith more than 50 U.S. patents and 100 international patents, Lansing-based
AFID Therapeutics develops chemicals compounds used in everything from pharmaceuticals and soaps to plastics and textiles.
What makes AFID unique is its ability to break down complicated carbohydrates to create natural—rather than petroleum-based—compounds.
“We’re one of a few groups in the world that specializes in unlocking carbohydrates,” says AFID founder Rawle Hollingsworth. “All of the top 10 pharmaceutical companies in the world use our chemicals,”
AFID is the only company to create replacement for Heparin, which prevents blood clots during bypass surgeries.
Read more
here.
EnerFusion
EnerFusion founders Joe Kobus and Tom Davis are helping solve one of the many irritating components of air travel: powering the plugged-in traveler.
Kobus and Davis created “Power Dok,” a freestanding power station equipped with two three-prong outlets so travelers can charge PDAs, phones and computers while they’re waiting for a flight.
They just put Power Dok in Lansing’s
Capital Region International Airport. Now if we could just get them in the United terminal at O’Hare.
Read more
here.
IDV SolutionsIDV Solutions created an Internet map on steroids. Their Visual Fusion Server 3.0 compiles information from all over the country and layers it over a Virtual Earth map, so companies can get a better handle on data.
For example, Lansing-based IDV can take hurricane data from all over the country, overlay it on a Virtual Earth map, combine it with real-time weather prediction and ocean data, and use the result to help oil companies determine when to evacuate employees before a hurricane.
Read more
here.
AI Medical Devices Inc.
Michigan State University (MSU) Department of Fisheries and Wildlife Associate Professor John Schwartz and his brother, Richard, created a plastic tube that’s changing the way doctors probe tricky trachea.
The two brothers created the Williamston-based
AI Medical Devices Inc., based on their invention, the Rigid Incubating Fiberoptic Laryngoscope. This small device takes away a lot of the risk associated with inserting a plastic tube into the trachea, a procedure that protects a patient's airway and allows for mechanical ventilation.
Read more
here.
CareCkCareCk Founder Rae-Claire Johnson is streamlining medical record-keeping with her bio-ID system, which gives patients and doctors access to medical records via a patient’s thumbprint.
Every time the patient sees any doctor for any ailment, their vitals, medicine, procedures and treatments are be logged in the system, reducing redundant paperwork.
Johnson’s novel idea has sparked a lot of interest in the medical community. She’s on the verge of signing up providers and hopes to soon open her headquarters in Lansing.
“No one in the health care industry is looking at those issues to the degree that we think they have to,” she says.
Read more
here.
Dragon Bleu VodkaWe can thank two enterprising MSU graduates for putting another vodka on the shelves of Lansing’s many bars. Innovative importers Jared Rapp and Moti Goldring recently created
RGI Brands, the East Lansing-based company in charge of distributing
Dragon Bleu vodka in the states.
The two didn’t distill the vodka, but they used their MSU educations and discerning taste buds to get it out of France and into our winter-chilled gullets. Yum!
Read more
here.
Rock ‘N GoCheryl Miller and Heather Lewis found a way to educate their kids while shuttle-busing them around from activity to activity—and then turned it into a business.
Miller and Lewis just launched
Rock ‘N Go, a Williamston-based company that produces educational CDs and workbooks. Their product has made it past their toughest critics, their kids, but it’s also in local bookstores, including
Schuler’s.
Read more
here.
Impression 5’s Giant Eyeball
Impression 5 Science Center partnered with
VisionCare Associates to build a massive peeper for students to use as an educational tool. As far as we can figure, this is the biggest eyeball exhibit in the country. Not only do kids get to walk inside it (hello
Magic School Bus), they also learn about eye care and eye health.
Read more
here.
Balance ConciergeLansing entrepreneur and former
Sparrow Health System employee Judy Foley created
Balance Concierge, an on-line and in-person service system that specializes in checking off “To Do” lists—from pet care, health and beauty services and child care—for hospital employees and patients.
“We want to save them time and money,” Foley says.
Foley is adding hospital systems to her client list, which already includes more than 450 vendors worldwide. The vendors offer coupons that Foley passes to her busy and laid-up clients.
Read more
here.
Nanobrick
Okemos-based
Nanobrick creates educational devices that teach kids about an industry most adults don’t even understand.
This year, Nanobrick developed a series of educational tools to teach kids about nanotechnology, the super-small science that breaks down particles in order to create new products. Nanobrick’s educational products also include a Van de Graaff Generator, a Lego-based, hand-held electric generator that teaches kids about the creation of electricity.
Read more
here.
While we certainly couldn’t squeeze all of our favorite innovations into a Top 10 list, we hope this gives you just a glimpse into what kind of minds are tinkering with ideas in the Capital region.
Got a Capital region innovation you’d like to talk about? Contact us here.
Ivy Hughes is the managing editor of Capital Gains. She couldn’t find a word to describe her innovative talents so she created one: un-innovator.
Dave Trumpie is the managing photographer for Capital Gains. He is a freelance photographer and owner of Trumpie Photography.
Photos:John Schwartz with AT Medical's scope
AFID Therapeutics lab
EnerFusion founders Tom Davis (lft) and Joe Kobus with a Power Dok
Dragon Bleu Vodka
The giant eyeball at Impression 5
All Photographs © Dave Trumpie unless noted
Dragon Bleu photo courtesy of Dragon Bleu