Jay Sachetti joined Jeff O’Brien, partner at Husch Blackwell and Dyanne Ross-Hanson, president of Exit Planning Strategies talked about the market for mergers and acquisitions, exit planning opportunities for companies that don’t end up for sale and how companies can maximize their eventual sale price during an early October panel at the first Upsize on Tap event at Summit Brewing Co. in St. Paul.
When the state Legislature passed a law requiring employers to provide paid leave and safe time for employees, Justin Bieganek started hearing differing details from friends, colleagues and peers.
“Thanks to the innovators,” reads the message on the video montage playing at Alpha Video headquarters in Eden Prairie, where we visited for this issue’s cover story.
and we shared in the delight of CEO Kevin Groves as he talked about the many inspirational characters that feed the inventive spirit there.
There was the Edison conference room situated right by the Tesla room, which was a deliberate juxtaposition given the famous feud between followers of the two. You didn’t know about that feud? It seems Nicolas Tesla and Thomas Edison were “both giants of electrical engineering whose innovations changed history,” according to Mental Floss, and also bitter rivals.
Tesla, a Serbian, was working for the phone company in Budapest and then was invited to work for the Continental Edison Co. stateside. Edison hired Tesla, although he thought the man’s ideas were “splendid” but “utterly impractical.”
Tesla eventually raised enough money to found the Tesla Electric Light Co., where he developed several successful patents including AC generators, wires, transformers, lights, and a 100 horsepower AC motor, according to Mental Floss. Meanwhile, Edison insisted his own direct current (DC) system was superior, and when Tesla sold his alternating-current products to Edison rival George Westinghouse, the rivalry burned bright.
Hedy Lamarr is another inventor featured in the video, and if you’re like me you didn’t know about that part of her biography. (Our design director and photographer, Jonathan Hankin, is a master of arcane information, and so naturally he knew all about it.) She was also the glamorous film actress in Austria and then America who starred in the movies from the late 1930s to 1950s.
At the beginning of World War II, according to Wikipedia, Lamarr and composer George Antheil developed a radio guidance system for Allied torpedoes, which used “spread spectrum and frequency hopping technology to defeat the threat of jamming by Axis powers. The principles of their work are now incorporated into modern Wi-Fi” and Bluetooth technology.
John Logie Baird is another giant of invention featured at Alpha Video, and one of the most apropos for the firm. Of Scottish descent, he is credited with making the photomechanical television and becoming the first person to televise pictures of objects in motion.
Right after our visit to Alpha Video, it was Oscar time, and I was reminded again of some great innovators that I had not known about before. It was the three stars of “Hidden Figures,” the picture about the African-American women who helped NASA put its first astronauts into space. Katherine Johnson is the real-life physicist featured in the movie, and she came out in a wheelchair and a blue gown to bask in a standing ovation.
“A true NASA and American hero,” is how Taraji Henson, the actress who played Johnson, described her. That movie, once again, caused me to wonder how I had never heard this story before.
Often times at work we focus on the practical, even the prosaic—for instance, I wanted to interview Kevin Groves because of his experience in deciding to buy out his majority partner to become sole owner of Alpha Video, and in fact that mission was fulfilled.
But the interview also opened my eyes to many people I didn’t know about before, and taught me yet again the sources of inspiration are abundant if you’ll just look and listen for them. Thanks to the rich community of business owners who routinely introduce me and our readers to many things I didn’t know.
Beth Ewen
Editor and co-founder
Upsize Minnesota
