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Startup NICO reassembles Suros’ management team: Medical-device maker aims to launch product soon

Medical-device maker Suros Surgical Systems was one of the fastest-growing companies in Indianapolis history. Just six years after forming it in 2000, founders sold it for $248 million. Is it any wonder they want to work together again? In late July, former Suros Chairman Jim Baumgardt and former Vice President of Sales Jeff Hanthorn joined locally based NICO Corp., the startup launched early this year by former Suros CEO Jim Pearson and Joseph Mark, one of Suros’ founders. The mission…

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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: What you might not know about messengers

I’d like to put in a kind word for one of the most underused tools in business. It lets you stay in contact with lots of others online, send and receive files, make phone calls, keep in touch with things at home, and even hold Web videoconferences, after a fashion. It’s known generically as “instant messaging,” but you may know it under any number of trade names: MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger, ICQ, AIM and many others. I use both MSN…

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Going mobile: Local executive carves niche as national expert on fast-growing banking-industry technology trend

Move over home computer, the more nimble mobile phone and competing handheld devices have taken the helm as the hippest ways to conduct banking business online. What’s more, an Indianapolis banking executive is at the forefront of the mobile-banking information movement and is promoting the benefits on a blog he created that is attracting scores of new viewers each month from around the world. Brandon McGee, 34, may keep bankers’ hours at the downtown office of the Columbus, Ohio-based Huntington…

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NOTIONS: Bless the blogosphere, all praise social networking

A few months ago, after considerable cajoling, my friend Erik convinced me to join yet another online social network. This one’s called Smaller Indiana. It bills itself as “making people and ideas findable.” So now, in addition to being “LinkedIn” with a few hundred of my friends and colleagues past and present, and in addition to being what BusinessWeek calls a “fogey on Facebook,” I’m also a Smoosier-the moniker for Smaller Indiana members. No sooner had I become a Smoosier…

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Pitch-Perfect Price: Digonex Technologies’ software helps retailers profit from demand

Is every song downloaded from iTunes really worth 99 cents? Indianapolis-based Digonex Technologies doesn’t think so, and it has developed a computer program using some complicated algorithms to prove it. The company’s software compiles sales data and re-prices items for online sales, allowing merchants to maximize profits by adjusting prices up or down based on demand. Consumers don’t notice a difference. “What we’re doing is a big idea,” said Digonex CEO Jan Eglen, 65. “Most of the [pricing systems] you…

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Doctors put records in patients’ pockets:

Arming patients with portable electronic medical records that physicians can access during emergencies is becoming more prevalent among health care providers. The Heart Center of Indiana in Carmel, a partnership between St. Vincent Health and The Care Group Inc., the state’s largest cardiology group, recently started the practice. Community Health Network and Dr. Tim Story, who chairs the largest group of physicians at Clarian North Medical Center, are among others who have rolled out portable records systems. The health information…

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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Are applicants snickering over your want ads?

One of the biggest complaints techies have about employers is how their want ads are written. Some techies avoid certain jobs on the basis of their ads alone. It may come as a surprise to HR professionals, but in many cases their ads are received with mingled mirth and sarcasm. There are many sins the want ads commit. One of the most common is just general cluelessness. I’ve seen want ads that request 10 years of experience with a product…

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Fishers planning tech incubator: Town hires former IU Emerging Technology Center chief to lead biz park

Fast-growing Fishers has the kind of assets economic developers dream about-strong schools, affordable housing and median family income of $81,971. Now the town wants to build on that foundation by adding a high-tech business park to its list of amenities. “Businesses are looking to come to a site where they can find employees with the requisite level of education and the ability to get additional education close by. Education is the key,” said Fishers Town Council President Scott Faultless. “We…

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Fueling a new trend: Interest in telecommuting on the rise due to higher gasoline costs

When she accepted a job three months ago at Greenwood-based Tilson HR Inc., Kristen Shingleton received not only the usual array of employee benefits but also the assurance that she could work from home two days a week. While the concept of telecommuting still may seem a bit radical to many companies, it could become as common as vacation time and 401(k) plans if gas prices continue to climb. “It’s saving me about $200 a month,” said Shingleton, a senior…

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Tech jobs rise, but graduates are on decline: Universities working hard to attract students into IT, computer sciences

At a time when central Indiana is adding high-tech jobs faster than any other area in the Midwest, the overall health of the industry could be threatened by a lack of interest from college students. The Washington, D.C.-based Computing Research Association’s annual survey of universities with doctorate-granting programs found an 18-percent drop this year in students completing bachelor’s degrees in professional information technology fields. The latest statistics are particularly alarming given they continue a trend seen for several years. Enrollment…

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Cable companies contemplate killing analog: Consumers fear price increases, conversion hassles

A federal mandate will kill analog television broadcasts early next year, but it won’t kill analog once and for all. How much longer analog will survive is largely a question for cable TV companies, and they’re struggling with the decision. The Federal Communications Commission is forcing all broadcasters-including locals such as WISH-TV Channel 8 and national broadcasters such as NBC-to stop broadcasting in analog and air only in digital by February 2009. But that mandate doesn’t affect cable companies, which…

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SURF THIS: 124 125 301 166At Etsy.com, buyers meet their creative makers

Ah, the idealism of youth. There’s something truly refreshing (and yes, at times, frustrating) about the effervescent optimism on display by young people. They look at the world, see a problem (perceived or real) and set out to change things. Of course, most of their efforts end up on the pile of broken dreams, but every once in a while, one breaks through. They achieve success, they realize their dreams, and they do it while actually making the world a…

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IU program aims to turn lab rats into leaders: Business training is tailor-made for scientists

Andrea Walker is a chemist with management aspirations. But instead of signing up for a traditional MBA program, the team manager at Indianapolis-based AIT Laboratories will enroll this year in a slimmed-down business program that focuses on the life sciences. The program, called the Kelley Executive Certificate in the Business of Life Sciences, is a new creation of Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business. The program will conduct most of its classes online over a one-year period. The courses will…

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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Go ahead, let your employees work and play online

On June 18, CNN (www.cnn.com) had a story about a study in CyberPsychology and Behavior Journal (www.liebertpub.com) that examined how people use the Internet for personal use at work. It was supposed to be eye-opening, but it wasn’t to me. The study showed that managers who fret and make rules about Internet use by employees are probably using it themselves for the same purposes. Of course, no manager would ever let himself be seduced into wasting company time, would he?…

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Local law firm fills entertaining niche: Lawyer’s music background helps land creative clients

In the late 1980s, Lafayette native Robert Meitus set off for Los Angeles with his band East of Eden in an attempt to make it in the music business. The group that shared management with Guns N’ Roses [singer Axl Rose grew up in Lafayette] never reached a sliver of its fame, however fleeting. But the experience did give Meitus an introduction to what ultimately would lead to a burgeoning career as an intellectual property lawyer. Capital Records came calling,…

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SPORTS: A 40-year hacker tries playing golf the right way

Every December, my wife and daughters ask the inevitable question, “What do you want for Christmas?” I always reply, “world peace.” Otherwise, I’ve been blessed with an abundance of stuff. No sense adding to the pile. But this past December, I actually got something that transcended a want. It was a need. Golf lessons. Like, from a pro. I’ve been chasing the little white pill around the pasture for 40 years. I’m selftaught and it shows. I picked up a…

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Progress with entrepreneurship

Compendium Blogwareâ??s announcement today that it raised $1.6 million in private funding is another brick in
the wall as the Indianapolis area and the state continue their push to build a culture of entrepreneurship.

Investors are showing more interest…

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The daily lunch special? Life sciences information: Law firm, Indiana Health Industry Forum bringing industry players together for monthly presentations

The phrase “Let’s do lunch” has taken on a new meaning over the past five years in the Indiana life sciences community. Since 2003, a who’s who of the biotechnology, medical device, pharmaceutical and other fields have gathered at the downtown law offices of Barnes & Thornburg LLP to meet and eat at the Life Sciences Lunch Series. A collaborative effort of the law firm and the Indiana Health Industry Forum, the monthly event provides a networking and education platform…

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RETURN ON TECHNOLOGY: Beware of the employee too busy to read

Is Google making us stupid? No, but it’s contributing to the problem. It’s well-known that, although we shape our tools, we are in turn shaped by them. Look no further than the hollowed-out cities of the middle 20th century, when the automobile gave us the mobility to build bedroom suburbs. Mobility killed off neighborhood social clubs, eliminated multi-generational families living together, and stretched town infrastructure like roads and sewers to the breaking point. Sleepy outlying school systems suddenly had both…

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VOICES FROM THE INDUSTRY: Nanotechnology presents an enormous opportunity

In a “supersized” culture, where bigger is better, nanotechnology is redefining the meaning of slimming down. Today, all of our favorite songs fit on a business card-size machine instead of on hundreds of CDs. Loud, clunky medical equipment has been with sleek quiet machinery that produces results in seconds. And, scientists and engineers in various industries are working with the smallest particles to build some of the most complex structures. The term “nanotechnology” refers to materials and devices that function…

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