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Minnesota Technology Magazine - Special Tech Issue 2005

A Decade of Innovation

By any objective measure, Minnesota should be considered a clever state. The chronology of well-known innovations to come out of the North Star State begins near the end of the Civil War (see “Invented Here or Not?”), rapidly picks up steam throughout the 20th century, scores big with a large number of industrial and medical successes in the last quarter century, and continues with current research that holds immense promise for the future.

The legacy of invention includes many iconic symbols of innovation such as 3M’s Scotch-brand tape and Post-It notes and Medtronic’s pacemakers. Beyond those icons, however, thousands of new ideas and contrivances have been floated, evaluated, manufactured, and sold. To limit the scope, the goal here was to explore some of the more important innovations to come out of Minnesota in the last decade. There’s a built-in challenge to that approach, however. Selecting which innovations to highlight is an almost ludicrous task, given that there are more than 5 million people and thousands of companies in the state, each inventing, creating, and innovating in their own significant ways.

Still, after examining a phone book-sized stack of articles and reports, and considering the idea from several perspectives, a few broad areas of the state’s innovation leadership began to emerge out of the fog of information overload. In the end, we selected three areas for in-depth look. Two areas are already well known; the third may be a bit of a surprise.

Minnesota has always been known for its innovation in agricultural and food technology. But since this in itself is a broad area, where has innovation been noteworthy? Well, the last 10 years have produced a particularly bright spot in the rapidly evolving realm of renewable energy. Ethanol, biodiesel, and cogeneration projects have grown as fast as hybrid corn on a nitrogen drip, and the future seems to hold nearly endless promise for them.

In medical devices, drug delivery has been the setting for a startling number of innovations in the last 10 years, and is an area that may hold as much promise as the development of new drugs themselves.

Finally, a seldom explored but highly productive area in terms of important advances and improvements has been the state’s contribution to ergonomic and comfort technologies. From the Northland come some of the most hands-on and personal innovations of all.

Renewable energy

To start off, consider the historical gazetteer of domestic energy booms. First, it was the hills of western Pennsylvania near Titusville, where Edwin Drake found oil in 1859. In 1901, the world’s largest gusher at the Spindletop oil field in east Texas signaled the start of the Texas oil industry that fueled generations of American drivers. Then in the 1970s came the snowcovered areas around Prudhoe Bay, Alaska. The next boom location might well be the cornfields of Renville County. That’s because over the last 10 years, some of the most significant technological innovation in renewable energy has occurred in Minnesota. Has the Midwest positioned itself to become the country’s prime source of biomass energy?

“We’re heading in that direction, especially in terms of basic research,” says Dick Hemmingsen, director of the University of Minnesota’s Initiative for Energy and the Environment (IREE). “We’ve seen some remarkable innovations, including reforming [converting] ethanol to hydrogen and dramatically improving biofuel efficiency through full-value extraction of ethanol.”

Indeed, there has been considerable enterprise in terms of renewable energy. “Minnesota has about 700 large-scale wind turbines producing electricity, and hundreds of additional wind turbines are in the planning and construction stage,” says Hemmingsen's U of M colleague, Charles Muscoplat, dean of the College of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences. “Our state’s 14 ethanol plants create 450 million gallons of ethanol a year, and we’re building two more plants that will increase the state’s ethanol production to 535 million gallons. Also, the state’s first biodiesel plants are about to begin supplying fuel made from soybeans.”

The import of what’s come to pass so far is immense. With additional innovation in the field of renewable energy, U.S. Department of Energy figures indicate that Minnesota could become a net energy exporter within a generation. And the steps taken here will serve as lessons to create energy independence nationally. That may hard to believe, considering the state produces about the same amount of oil and coal as it does sugar cane and tuna. But the Department of Energy estimates that 30.9 billion kWh of electricity could be generated using renewable biomass fuels in Minnesota. The feds calculate that this is enough electricity to fully supply the annual needs of 3,091,000 average homes, or 180 percent of the residential electricity use in Minnesota.

Hemmingsen says the state’s leadership in renewable energy innovations stems from “a unique partnership between industry, the University, and policy makers in the state legislature.” For example, as of June 2005, Minnesota is the only state in the nation that mandates 10 percent of gasoline sold in the state contain ethanol, which can be produced from corn. The Minnesota Department of Commerce is now requesting proposals for new grid-connected community wind energy projects of 900 kilowatts or more to be installed and operating with a Minnesota electric utility by June 2007. A previous Department of Commerce grant helped the U of M’s Morris campus install a 1.65 megawatt wind turbine that is expected to supply half of the campus’s energy needs. And IREE recently awarded more than $8.5 million to 24 renewable energy projects at the University of Minnesota. The multiyear projects focus on such topics as bioenergy and bioproducts, hydrogen production and distribution, solar thermal heating systems, the conversion of livestock waste to energy and products, and more.

Another conspicuous renewable energy project is the woodfired power plant in downtown St. Paul. Anders Rydaker, the head of Market Street Energy, says that, “the important thing to note is that we produce electricity and use the waste heat to heat the downtown.”

This sort of installation, called a cogeneration plant, uses the heat generated as a byproduct of electricity production, making the enterprise particularly clean and green. And, notes Rydaker, the combined heating and power plant burns a significant amount of waste wood. “More than 75 percent of the energy required for heating comes from renewable energy sources such as waste wood,” he says.

The wood is collected from dead trees and tree trimmings removed from municipal property by work crews. Projected to burn 280,000 tons of wood waste annually, the downtown installation is the largest wood-fired combined heating and power plant serving a district energy system in the United States.

Pharmaceutical Delivery Technology

The first highly refined sector of high-tech medical innovation was pharmaceuticals. Of course, many health problems required more than chemical means to treat them, and so medical devices, such as cardiac pacing equipment, replacement body parts, and monitoring devices soon became important in the world of health care.

In the last 10 years, a third wave (or at least wavelet) in health care technological innovation has washed ashore. Important innovations come from the area perched halfway between the worlds of drugs and medical devices—specifically, the technology of drug delivery. Minnesota has been a hotbed in the development and commercialization of drug delivery technology. But is drug delivery technology really that big a deal?

“Absolutely, it’s a big deal,” says Don Gerhardt, CEO of Medical Alley, a trade group representing Minnesota-based biomedical companies. “As pharmaceutical, bioscience, and genetic science advancements keep coming, these materials need to be delivered at the right time, at the right place, and at the right dosage. Minnesota has a very strong position in this field.”

Minnesota companies, ranging from established organizations such as Medtronic, Smith Medical, and 3M Drug Delivery Systems to smaller, younger companies, have been amplifying the efficiency and efficacy of medicines by precisely placing them where and when they need to go. One significant area of innovation pioneered by Minnesota companies has been drug coating technology. Plymouth’s Boston Scientific (which was known as SciMed Life Systems Inc. before being purchased by Boston Scientific) and Eden Prairie’s Surmodics developed drug delivery systems based on the interaction of implantable polymer devices and drugs. Both companies also have developed heart stents designed to release drugs that prevent the reclosing of the artery caused by the body’s reaction to the stent. By layering carefully controlled coatings of polymer components and drugs, the implantable drugeluting stents precisely meter the rate at which the drug diffuses out of the device. That benefits the patient by keeping the stent open more reliably.

Drug-eluting stents hit the market in April of 2003. New Jersey-based Johnson & Johnson, using technology developed by Surmodics, was the first in. Boston Scientific entered the U.S. market in April 2004. Since then the two Minnesota companies have taken the worldwide market from about $1.5 billion to $5 billion. “Unquestionably, the drug-eluting stent is one the most significant products developed in the last several years,” says Eric Simso, Boston Scientific’s vice president of marketing. “It’s one of the biggest products that Boston Scientific has ever launched.” The drug delivery industry is large and spans numerous disciplines— there are myriad ways to get medicine from bottles into patients. Eden Prairie-based Cima Labs is a drug delivery systems developer that markets its technologies through collaborations with large pharmaceutical companies. The company’s value proposition includes developing and manufacturing prescription and over-the-counter medication based on proprietary, orally disintegrating technologies. For example, one of its dissolving technologies is called OraSolv, a soft, friable oral drug delivery format.

Cima works with a range of big drug makers such as Mead Johnson/Bristol-Myers Squibb (which uses OraSolv for its Tempra FirsTabs® pediatric analgesics), Wyeth (Alavert™ antihistamine) and AstraZeneca (FazaClo™ schizophrenia medication). According to Cima Labs General Manager Todd McLaughlin, studies show that 40 percent of patients have real trouble taking medicines orally. Says McLaughlin: “Our products benefit patients, in particular the elderly and children who have trouble swallowing pills.”

And the taste issue? “That’s one the things that differentiates Cima Labs’ technology from the others out there,” McLaughlin adds. “We don’t taste-mask. Instead we coat the ingredients so a person’s taste buds never taste the medicine. [Cima Lab’s products] actually taste quite good.”

Ergonomics

People typically see innovation as high technology, but sometimes the best innovation is simple; it’s about using your brain in a better way. Or in this case, using your body in a better way.

Minnesota is populated with a sizable group of ergonomic innovators. They have no trade magazine or lobbying association— they don’t even have a separate SIC code. Yet it’s apparent to millions of sitters, standers, and sleepers that one of the state’s most innovative billion dollar industries focuses on products that make life comfortable.

From publicly traded corporations such as 3M and Select Comfort to medium-sized privately owned companies such as Eagan-based Ergotron, down to a group of smaller boutique manufacturers such as Halo Innovations of St. Paul and Health Postures of Glencoe, thousands of Minnesotans have been involved in the design and manufacture of devices that help people sit and sleep better and more comfortably. Given the revenues involved, the innovations in the field have been incredibly important, even if unheralded.

The state’s largest comfort exporters are probably Maplewood-based 3M and Plymouth-based Select Comfort. 3M manufactures a broad line of items directly affect the ergonomic and productivity aspects of the workspace. The company focuses its efforts in a few key places. “We’ve found there tended to be four areas that can cause undue strain: arms/wrists, neck/shoulder, legs/feet/back, and eyes (glare reduction),” said Kaleel Ahmed, business manager, 3M Office Supplies Division. “We draw from our wide array of technologies to develop ergonomic products designed to provide simple convenience to enhance comfort while working.” The firm’s workspace solutions range from gel wrist rests, document holders, and foot rests to glare-reducing task lights to office air cleaners.

Select Comfort is building a $600 million dollar per year business out of ergonomics. Thanks to its high-profile ad campaigns, almost everyone knows the company’s flagship product, the Sleep Number Bed, an adjustable-firmness bed, which it claims improves the quality of sleep. Select Comfort sells its products through company-operated stores, call centers, and indirect channels such as bedding retailers. Although the company was founded nearly 20 years ago, its steepest growth has occurred in the last 10, and its stock price has grown by a magnitude in the last five years. Several years, ago Glencoe-based HealthPostures LLC introduced the Stance Angle Chair, which users can shift through a range of postures, including sitting, kneeling, and standing. Its latest innovation is the Plasma2 System, which features a Stance Angle Chair along with a highly adjustable computer stand.

In a similar vein, Eagan-based Ergotron is building a business out of finding better ways to allow users to interact with their computers. The company is based on an positioning mechanism that uses something it calls Constant Force Technology. CEO Joel Hazzard says Ergotron’s new LCD screen holder with Constant Force Technology allows users to position computers monitors at a practically limitless array of angles and positions. The development comes at a good time—with LCD screens coming down in price, many computer owners are eager to reclaim the desktop real estate currently monopolized by boxy and cumbersome CRTs. And given that more than 100 million U.S. workers sit in front of computers each day, the company does seem to have a potentially lucrative market. It already has inked deals with computer giants such as Dell Computer to supply its customers with LCD screen and monitor holders, and Hazzard says that Ergotron is poised to grow revenues from $68 million to $100 million next year.

Few CEOs sitting in board rooms back in 1996 would have predicted that 10 years later, some of this state’s most original product ideas would occur in the areas of renewable energy or ergonomics. Undoubtedly, innovation will continue to be a prime Minnesota export. The vitality of the state’s brainpower in the areas of renewable energy, medical devices, and consumer products really shouldn’t surprise anyone, given the heritage of innovation here. What technological innovations will join heart stents and ethanol as hot spots in the next 10? Now that’s a hard call to make.

William Gurstelle is a Minneapolis-based freelance writer and frequent contributor to Minnesota Technology.

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