Letter from the Editor

December 2009

Canoes, violin bows and running boards

You’ve probably heard of Earl Bakken, the self-described “nerd” whose invention of the implantable pacemaker in 1957 laid the groundwork for Minnesota becoming a world leader in the medical device sector.

But I’m willing to bet that you don’t know much about the Miller brothers, Ben and Rudy, who launched a Winona company called Fiberite Corp. in 1947. Like Bakken, their early efforts set an entire industry in motion in Minnesota, just on a smaller scale.

The opening of Fiberite spawned a composites industry in Winona that today has more than 30 times the employment that would be expected in a city of that size, according to Jennifer Ridgeway, whose story about Minnesota composites manufacturing begins on Page 3 of this issue of Trends.

Ridgeway says Minnesota is only a mid-sized player in the U.S. composites sector, but roughly half the state’s jobs in the industry are concentrated in Winona.

Canoes, violin bows and pickup-truck running boards are among the items produced by composites manufacturers in this river city of 27,300. Winona State University offers the only composites materials engineering degree in the country. And in a tribute to the guys who started it all, the university’s engineering school is named the Miller Brothers School of Engineering.

Elsewhere in this issue, Teri Fritsma offers the second part of her story on the “he-cession” and Dave Senf examines what the economic recovery might look like in Minnesota. In other stories, Amanda Rohrer writes about the six types of unemployment measurement, while Alessia Leibert reviews the new Minnesota Energy Careers Web site that provides information on jobs, education and employers in the energy sector.

Finally, it was nearly a year ago that the Trends staff took part in a weeklong training session on applying lean principles to magazine production. Our goal: consistently put out four issues a year for the first time since the magazine was launched in 1998. I’m pleased to report that we have accomplished that goal with this issue. It was an interesting and challenging year, and we look forward to producing four more issues in 2010.

Monte Hanson
Editor