STARTUP'S SUCCESS KEEPS ECONOMIC BLOGGER BUSY
BYLINE: CORILYN SHROPSHIRE
If you've been checking economic development master Rob Lowe's blog, "MockEconomy" (http://mockeconomy.blogspot.com/) then you know he hasn't updated it recently. He's been busy.
His startup, Wellspring, added the National Institutes of Health to its roster of 11 new customers this year -- many of which are based in Europe, Dr. Lowe said yesterday.
Wellspring, just over a year old, provides software and services designed to assist research institutions and universities in cataloging, managing and sharing intellectual property ready for the marketplace.
Dr. Lowe has been spending one week each month in Lisbon, Portugal, overseeing the firm's European operation, which has eight universities as clients.
European countries, long known for pouring large amounts of government dollars into research, are embracing and stepping up efforts to turn taxpayer-funded research into technology and products that will improve the lives of citizens.
France and Portugal in particular have sought-out Wellspring's expertise in setting up technology transfer offices, according to Dr. Lowe.
He knows plenty about the subject -- not only does he frequently write about technology-driven economic development, but he practiced it too, until recently.
This month he left his job as the director of enterprise creation at Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Technology Transfer. He also gave up his tenured track professorial gig at CMU.
He hasn't however, vacated a Kauffman Foundation-funded research study at CMU charged with compiling "best practices" of region's efforts to grow their economies.
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Employees of the Pittsburgh Technology Council learned this week that the search for a new chief executive officer of the 1,300-member industry trade group would be for the council alone -- not its three affiliates.
Chairman John Friel (who moonlights as Medrad's CEO) gathered the council's staff on Monday to fill them in, said spokesman Kevin Lane.
"I don't believe that any final decision has been made whether or not the council and Catalyst Connection [and the others] will be broken up," he said.
The decision to seek out two new chiefs was made during ad hoc communications by the Catalyst Connection's 25-member board and the council's 50-member board. Steven Zylstra resigned in March after seven years steering the council and its three affiliates, which include Catalyst Connection, the Doyle Center for Manufacturing Technology and the Pennsylvania Nanomaterials Commercialization Center.
"My sense of it was that it may have been unwieldy for one person to adequately manage on a day-to-day basis," Mr. Lane said. "It's a very big job."
As it does every year, the council is gearing up for its strategic planning process that will be completed probably by early September, Mr. Lane said.
Nothing else has changed for the combined organization's 75-member staff, Mr. Lane said.
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Podcasting pundit and venture capitalist Glen Meakem plans to a tackle a touchy topic when he delivers the keynote address at the annual meeting of the African-American Chamber of Commerce on Wednesday.
Pennsylvania's current economic and tax policy helps fuel the rising murder rate among African-Americans, Mr. Meakem says. The stifled economy has forced young people who are able to leave and take jobs in business-friendly climates. Those who remain are "stuck in lousy schools and don't have opportunities"
The host of the "Glen Meakem Radio Show" isn't not shy about sharing his opinions nor explaining where he fits along the ideological spectrum -- he's a fiscal and social conservative. But Mr. Meakem, the co-founder and former chairman of FreeMarkets Inc., said he's not gearing up for a run for political office for personal reasons.
But he does have a "diagnosis and prescription" for addressing the problem, although "there's no easy fix," he said.
"One is top-down tax policy and bottom up-education policy," Mr. Meakem said.
Namely, cutting the corporate net income tax in half and eliminating the capital stock and franchise tax, in addition to creating competition in schools.
"The only way you can create jobs is attracting more business," he said. "When you create a favorable environment for business, all kinds of great things will happen that we can't predict."