Best practices: Technology & Innovation

That's different

Whether low-tech or high, five companies strive to make something new

by Andrew Tellijohn   Innovation is not the sole province of technology companies, as the finalists for Best Practices in Technology & Innovation prove.Case in point: French Meadow Bakery, whose founder pioneered the frozen bread category in 1987 and continues to experiment with new products such as bread packed with fiber to promote men’s health.“I can only create products that have never been done before,” says Lynn Gordon, president. Her statement could serve as a motto for the following group. Michael Haider, CEO of St. Paul-based BioE Inc., says his medical technology company had gone through a decade of embracing failure before it finally had a dramatic success to celebrate last year.“Failure was never a term I would have considered on the positive side of anything,” Haider says. But since he’s been at BioE, that viewpoint has changed dramatically because medical research takes a lot of trial-and-error. “When you think about it, what you learn from that failure can be so powerful because it will lead you to what eventually will be a success.”Lessons learned during BioE’s formative years have contributed to the company’s greatest victory thus far.That victory is PrepaCyte, a technology that separates and collects therapeutically important cells from blood-derived sources. It also enabled the company to discover rare adult stem cells in umbilical-cord blood. PrepaCyte will not only drive revenue to BioE. It also could provide options to researchers and medical companies with interest in regenerative medicine — options without the moral and ethical baggage that attend the use of embryonic stem cells, .When asked during questioning how he ensures that failures become learning experiences, he responds that when you spend a lot of money on bad ideas, seeking silver linings is important.Company researchers and management meet monthly and throughout various research projects to analyze problems and potential markets for technology. While those meetings are learning experiences, they also become pep talks.“We encourage our employees to reach, to don’t be afraid to fail,” Haider says. “We embrace it because we know they are learning.”He also keeps BioE employees up to speed on how the company is performing, including providing regular financial updates.“Those kinds of things you’re not going to keep secret anyway,” he says. “We always felt the rumors were worse than the truth. They need to know so they can make their own personal decisions.”Breaking groundFrench Meadow Bakery in Minneapolis is definitely not a technology company, but nobody can accuse founder Lynn Gordon of not being an innovator.She broke ground two decades ago when she became one of the first to embrace organic products. She virtually invented the organic frozen bread category in 1987. And French Meadow has regularly shown 15 percent to 25 percent annual growth rates during its existence.French Meadow has done this with an ongoing commitment to staying ahead of trends and to creating nutritious and tasty yeast-free breads. Amongst Gordon’s creations are a popular women’s bread with soy isoflavins, a high-in-fiber men’s bread, and a brown rice bread. Many French Meadow products are available across and outside of the United States.“We are pretty low-tech,” says Steve Shapiro, French Meadow’s vice president and co-owner, who presented the company’s best practice at the panel discussion.  “We make products the way everybody’s great-great-grandmother did.”While Shapiro jokes that many decisions were driven by desperation, he says much of the credit goes to Gordon spending immense amounts of time pounding the pavement. She visited grocers, along the way identifying needs and asking what types of products they would be interested in carrying.One of the company’s questions to live by: “What can’t the neighborhood baker do?” Shapiro says. Nowadays, through its bakery on Lyndale Avenue, Gordon tests new products on customers and gets a sense for what the market is demanding, a practice Shapiro calls “organic innovation.”No-travel meetingsWhen AOL-Time Warner needed to set up a company conference for 60,000 people across the world, the company called Netbriefings for assistance.The task made St. Paul-based Netbriefings sweat a bit. But the company installed two streaming servers at AOL and worked with the client’s existing technology, too.Netbriefings’ streaming Web video held up well.Gary Anderson, president and CEO, says that while face-to-face meetings are important, they aren’t always practical. With gas prices high and four major airlines in bankruptcy, there are a multitude of reasons why Netbriefings will continue to grow, he says.“The real root of the problem is business travel is too expensive and inefficient and you don’t get enough done except flying around in an airplane,” he says to attendees.While most of the meetings Netbriefings plans are smaller than the Time Warner project, its clientele is growing. The company focuses on large, secure company meetings, large outbound-marketing meetings and online training.Founders started the company because they saw a need for an integrated, easy-to-use technology that would allow companies to communicate without having to meet in person.Revenue at Netbriefings jumped 85 percent between 2002 and 2004, to just under $2 million from just over $1 million.It’s important, Anderson says, that companies meet an unmet niche, but also to not get ahead of themselves. “If you’re an emerging company you can’t be a trailer,” he says. “But you can’t afford to be too far out.”In a hurryAt The Protomold Co. Inc., everything revolves around speed.In a previous life, Protomold co-founder Larry Lukis became frustrated with how long it took to produce simple plastic parts. So he started Protomold and created a software system that simplified the process, cutting manufacturing time in many cases from four weeks to three days.On Protomold’s Web site interface, customers can create an automated graphic of the plastic part they need and get a price quote or a description of what they would need to change in order to enable Protomold to produce the part.Protomold’s strategy and its best practice are sticking with speed at all costs and eschewing any project that will slow down progress. If Protomold can’t make the part, the company tells the potential client to either change the design or find another manufacturer.“We will say no,” says Brad Cleveland, CEO. “If a customer is not in a hurry, they don’t need us. We never lose sight of that.”When asked by the audience how Protomold trains its customers to accept direction, Cleveland replies, not surprisingly, that it uses technology. Potential clients get a Web-based rendering of what their part will look like or an explanation why the company can’t design it. Protomold also sends out 35,000 mailings weekly and publishes a quarterly journal describing how its technology and accompanying capabilities have improved.It’s working. Protomold has seen revenue grow an average of 260 percent annually since it was founded in 1999. In 2005, the company opened a manufacturing site in the United Kingdom, establishing an overseas presence for the first time.Cleveland says the company follows several steps that have kept it successful. Protomold managers are extremely picky about whom  they hire, never settling and bringing aboard only the top management and mold-process technicians available. “It takes both technology and expertise,” Cleveland says, to maintain success.[contact] Gary Anderson, Netbriefings: 651.225.1532; ga*******@**********gs.com; www.netbriefings.com. Bradley Cleveland, The Protomold Co. Inc.: 763.479.3680; br***@*******ld.com; www.protomold.com. Lynn Gordon, French Meadow Bakery: 612.870.4740; lr******@**********ow.com; www.frenchmeadow.com. Michael Haider, BioE Inc.: 651.426.6466; mp*@**oe.com; www.bioe.com.