Michigan is an epicenter of innovation with its highly skilled workforce, world-class universities, beautiful communities and a 21st century infrastructure. But building that epicenter of innovation didn’t happen overnight. Michigan has a deeply rooted culture of innovation and an entrepreneurial ecosystem rich with resources.
The Michigan Advantage for companies everywhere is that they can come and draw on the brilliance of the innovators and risk-takers who laid the foundation of success for them. Michigan is attracting those companies who want to push the boundaries of innovation success even further.
Just look at the list of Michigan innovators who have been inducted into the National Inventor’s Hall of Fame, which honors men and women responsible for fundamental technology advances for human, social and economic progress. And every one of the industries they helped create and expand remains a growth industry today.
Digital Technology:
Donald Keck, born in Lansing and educated at Michigan State University, solved a problem that even Alexander Graham Bell could not – how to transmit voice signals along beams of light, which ignited the fiber-optic revolution. Fiber optics now drive the information revolution that is rapidly transforming our society — the way we work, learn and live – and our expectations for the future.
Claude Shannon developed one of the great conceptual breakthroughs of his generation: “A Mathematical Theory of Communication,” which laid the foundation of information theory — that information could be carried in digital form. It is what experts have called “a blueprint for the digital age.” Born in Petoskey and educated at the University of Michigan, his innovations earned him the IEEE Medal of Honor, the Kyoto Prize and a National Medal of Science Award.
Alternative Energy:
Glenn Seaborg, from Ishpeming, earned a Nobel Prize in Chemistry and was a pioneer in the development of nuclear medicine and nuclear power as an energy source.
Life Sciences:
John Sheehan came from Battle Creek and was educated at Michigan State University. He pushed the boundaries of innovation success by taking Sir Alexander Fleming’s discovery of penicillin and developed a biologically active cephem system that enabled the development of particular penicillins to combat particular bacteria, saving millions of lives around the world.
William Upjohn of Richland developed the world’s first disposable pill at a time when most medicines were dispensed in powdered form. His invention of a machine that could mass produce these pills with a regulated dosage allowed life-saving medicines to become more commercially available, creating millions of jobs and a multi-billion-dollar business that was a leader in the pharmaceutical industry for more than 100 years.
Advanced Manufacturing
John Parsons moved to Detroit, where he revolutionized manufacturing by changing the control of machines and industrial processes to become an exact science, creating the world’s first computerized, real-time management reporting systems. He also produced the fuel lines for the Saturn booster that would help propel U.S. astronauts to the moon.
Homeland Security & Defense
Ross Freeman chose Michigan State to earn his degree in Physics and went on to create an entire new industry with his invention of Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA), launching what would become a multi-billion dollar company and creating millions of jobs.
Today, Freeman’s FPGAs continue to solve business-critical problems across a multitude of industries. ”Device DNA” is a product used to protect design and embedded code from cloning, overbuilding, and reverse-engineering while still using outsourced manufacturing and assembly facilities.
Clarence Johnson of Ishpeming, who was educated at the University of Michigan, patented afterburning for turbo-jet engines. Renowned for his managerial talent, he created Lockheed’s “Skunk Works” – a team of engineers that are credited with designing some of the company’s most remarkable aviation technology.
So the challenge is on for companies everywhere to come and draw on the brilliance of the innovators and risk takers who laid the foundation of success, to take all that Michigan has to offer:
- A resource pool of 65,000 engineers, the highest concentration anywhere in the nation.
- The top number of patents in any state.
- An ecosystem of world-class research universities.
- A deeply rooted culture of innovation.
All of these factors draw companies to come to Michigan to push the boundaries of innovation success even further, creating products that will change the world!
About The Author:
Jackie Bassett is founder and CEO of BT Industrials Inc., a strategic management and technology consultancy where she helps CEOs of global 500 companies design and execute their innovation strategies. She was one of the first 100 employees at Netscreen Technologies, which started in 1997, successfully IPO’d in 2001, then was acquired by Juniper Networks in 2004 for $4 billion. Her background is in investment banking, where she worked at State Street International. Her innovation strategy work has been in a variety of sectors, from telecommunications and digital entertainment to healthcare, clean tech and biotech. She holds an MBA from Babson College and a private pilot’s license. She is co-author of the book “Drawing On Brilliance” (www.btind.com). She can be reached at jackieb@btind.com.
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