Three Minnesota High-Tech Firms Honored with National Tibbetts Awards
~ Awards Recognize Economic Impact and Business Success of Innovations ~
ST. PAUL – Three Minnesota high-tech companies have been honored as recipients of national Tibbetts Awards for their success in bringing technological innovations to market.
Architecture Technology Corporation (ATC) of Eden Prairie, Minnesota Wire and Cable Company (MWCC) of St. Paul, and NVE Corporation of Eden Prairie received the awards during a recent ceremony in Washington, D.C.
The companies are among 55 recipients honored nationwide. They were selected from a pool of more than 4,000 companies that receive contracts and grants from the federal Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.
“We are extremely proud of these companies and their success,” said Commissioner Dan McElroy of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development. “Their ingenuity, vision and hard work have brought new products to market and new jobs and economic growth to Minnesota – growth and innovation that almost certainly wouldn’t have happened without SBIR funding.”
Tibbetts Awards recognize the economic impact of technological innovation; business achievement and effective collaborations; and demonstrated state and regional impact and proven support.
ATC was honored for its software developments, NVE for advances in nanotechnology, and MWCC for high achievement with five years or fewer in the SBIR program.
“These three companies are national leaders in technology development and commercialization,” said Betsy Lulfs, SBIR program director with DEED. “Their work also advances Minnesota’s reputation as a center of high-tech innovation.”
SBIR is a highly competitive federal program that encourages small businesses to explore their technological potential. The program recognizes that the risk and expense of conducting serious research and development efforts are often beyond the means of many small businesses.
By reserving a specific percentage of federal R&D funds for small business, SBIR funds the critical startup and development stages and it encourages the commercialization of the technology, product, or service. Each year, eleven federal departments and agencies award $2 billion in research contracts to small business through SBIR.
Since its enactment in 1982, as part of the Small Business Innovation Development Act, SBIR has helped thousands of small businesses to compete for federal research and development awards. Their contributions have enhanced the nation's defense, protected the environment, advanced health care, and improved the ability to manage information and manipulate data.
Launched as a tiny experimental project at the National Science Foundation, the SBIR program today has developed more than $21 billion worth of research by more than 15,000 firms, resulting in more than 45,000 patents. SBIR companies employ more than 400,000 scientists and engineers, making the program the largest concentration of scientific and engineering talent in the United States, exceeding the combined total of all American academic and non-profit institutions.
Named for Roland Tibbetts, the originator of the SBIR program, the national awards are made annually to those small firms, projects, organizations and individuals judged to exemplify the very best in SBIR achievement.
ABOUT THE WINNERS:
Architecture Technology Corporation (ATC)
www.atcorp.com
Architecture Technology Corporation has used the SBIR program as an important tool to develop a core of advanced technologies in Next Generation Networking Technologies, Secure Computing Systems, Network Management, Information Management, Intelligent Systems, and High-Confidence Systems.
“The SBIR program allows us to challenge our young engineers and give them opportunities to develop innovations,” said Gene Proctor, the company’s vice president for business development. “Just as important, commercialization of those innovations and developing products has been key part of the company’s growth.”
ATC has relied on a range of commercialization strategies from spinning off entirely new companies to inserting the technologies into larger ATC product development efforts to direct delivery to the government agency and marketing to prime contractors.
For example, Cyber Security Technologies spun out of ATC as a wholly owned subsidiary to market the OnLine Digital Forensic Suite™ (OnLine DFS™) in the commercial market. OnLine DFS™ is the first “electronic discovery” software to allow business, law enforcement, academia, and government to conduct live online investigations of computers and computer networks compromised by a malicious entity.
ATC has grown to a technical staff of nearly one hundred engineers and scientists with more than 75 percent having advanced degrees and 20 percent with PhDs in computer scientist, mathematics and a wide range of engineering disciplines. ATC facilities include a subsidiary in Ithaca, New York, and offices in Rome, New York, Washington, DC, and Dayton, Ohio.
Minnesota Wire and Cable Company (MWCC)
www.mnwire.com
Prior to September 11, 2001, 80 percent of MWCC’s business was designing and selling products to the medical device industry. Following the terrorist attacks of 2001, the company decided to concentrate on national defense and homeland security. A successful defense venture made it clear that the company’s strengths in innovative engineering were ripe for participation in the SBIR program.
“It’s been about funding a vehicle to help us remain competitive – and it’s worked,” says company spokesman Chip Laingen. “We’re talking those things that we’ve learned from our SBIR work and putting it into other area. We’ve got our first patent pending.”
Today, half of MWCC’s revenues are in the area of national defense. The company’s success has led to substantial revenue increases, employment gains, technology infrastructure, intellectual property submissions, human and intellectual capital, and leveraged, related business.
NVE Corporation
www.nve.com
SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) funding have been the financial investment behind NVE’s microelectronic product development (spintronic nanotechnology and MRAM), manufacturing, licensing and sales. This critical funding has supported the development of high-tech products, used to acquire and transmit data, in the areas of spintronic sensors, couplers, and memory for major medical and industrial markets throughout the world.
In 1989, NVE was a start-up company with two employees and $169,000 in annual revenues. Today, NVE is a publicly-held company (NASDAQ: NVEC) with a market capitalization of over $140 million and 48 employees. Once almost entirely dependent on contract research, the company now earns 92 percent of its revenues from worldwide product sales. Its most recent quarter totaled $14.4 million. Most recent year product sales have increased more than five fold from fiscal 2003.
“The depth and breadth of spintronic technology and MRAM is endless,” says Daniel A. Baker, the company’s president and chief executive officer. “It’s nanotechnology that helps us make smarter devices. It’s the eyes and nerves of robotic systems in factories down to small implantable cardiac devices and hearing aids.”
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