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IBJ strayed from its usual format last week to bring you our annual Innovation Issue, which this year featured 20 startup companies worth watching.
I hope you spent a little time with the issue and learned about some of the innovative companies that are growing in Indiana. Their ideas and technology are absolutely fascinating and, in some cases, just mind-boggling.
Take Ixana, a Purdue University-affiliated company that has raised $19 million and already has more than 50 employees.
The company has developed technology that enables wearable and smart devices to securely communicate through touch by creating a private electric-field-based network around humans. That allows for “seamless data transfer between wearables like smartwatches, earbuds and [augmented reality] glasses,” the company says.
Ixana was recently awarded a fourth Defense Department contract.
Or consider Adipo Therapeutics, an Indiana University-affiliated startup that’s trying to attack obesity in a completely different way.
While popular weight-loss systems and drugs focus largely on controlling appetite and calorie intake, Adipo is focused on increasing energy expenditure.
It’s technology converts subcutaneous white fat into healthier, energy-burning brown fat. The company said that in rodents, “browning” leads to increased resting metabolism, weight loss, improved glucose control and muscle preservation. “The treatment targets declines in resting metabolic rate associated with yo-yo dieting, aging-related muscle loss and hormonal changes,” Adipo says.
One of my favorite startups in the issue is StrapTech, a company founded by three recent Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology grads that is based on a senior project.
StrapTech makes a wireless device that enables semitruck drivers to monitor the tension in their cargo straps in real time. The device can be attached to existing cargo straps and communicates data via Bluetooth to the driver’s smartphone or tablet. It will alert the driver if it detects a load shift so the driver can check the cargo’s straps.
The coolest part of the story, though, came when the founders needed to test their product prototype and headed to a Love’s Travel Stop off of U.S. 41 south of Terre Haute. They knocked on the doors of truckers taking a break and asked if they’d try the straps—and several said yes.
The issue is packed with many more stories about founders who had great ideas or made interesting discoveries in the lab and are figuring out how to turn those ideas into viable companies.
If you missed the print issue last week, you can still read all the stories at IBJ.com/innovation-issue-2025.
Make sure not to miss the tips that High Alpha partner Eric Tobias offers for startup founders (and read about his own new venture: Opendate, a software platform that streamlines booking, ticketing and marketing for intended concert venues).
We’ve had great response from readers about the issue. But anytime we change things up, we receive a few questions. One of our regular readers emailed me this message: “I hope this week’s paper is not going to be a permanent layout change. Please, don’t do it!”
I assured him we’d be back to normal this week. “Oh good!” he wrote me back. “I was pretty upset.”
It makes me happy to hear that readers like what we’re doing week in and week out. But we will continue to shake things up now and then with special issues. Email me at [email protected] with your ideas for other topics or stories we should tackle. We’re all ears.•
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Weidenbener is editor of IBJ. Reach her at [email protected].
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