For the best R&D ideas, look no further than Ohio

9/1/2008 1

Ohio. Just another link on the industrial Rust Belt, you say? A wasteland littered with yesterday's technology?
Bite your tongue.

Research and development at enterprises in the Cleveland, Columbus and Cincinnati areas produced 10 of this year's 100 most significant innovations, R&D Magazine says in its September issue.

With 10 of the current crop of award winners emanating from the Buckeye state, Ohio ranked behind only California, with 18.

"And many of these companies and labs that you see among the 2008 awards have multiple awards over the years," said Tim Studt, a former editor-in-chief of the trade monthly published in New Jersey by Advantage Business Media who is still involved in the selection process that the magazine has used for decades.

The companies and institutions behind this year's Ohio winners:

NASA Glenn Research Center. The Cleveland institution is one of the space agency's six research centers around the country. It's been a frequent winner of R&D 100 awards for more than 40 years.

Glenn has a technology transfer department that seeks ways to apply often-esoteric space-age solutions to down-to-earth problems and sometimes licenses its products to be manufactured for commercial sale. It developed two significant new technological marvels that won this year, one with the center's Brook Park partner, the Ohio Aerospace Institute.

Keithley Instruments Inc. The Solon company makes industrial and scientific instrumentation and measuring equipment. Its 2007 sales were just $144 million, but its innovative culture has resulted in many fresh and useful technological advances over the years.

Keithley's 2008 winner was for a sophisticated system enabling advanced industrial testing of multiple electronic signals that pass between electronic devices and the computers and handsets that monitor them.

Swagelok Co. The $1.3 billion privately held Solon company designs, makes and supplies fluid system products and services. Its award came for a newly patented process that renders the stainless-steel surfaces of tools harder and more resistant to wear. It, too, has won R&D 100 awards in the past.

Ethicon Endo-Surgery Inc. The Cincinnati designer, manufacturer and supplier of medical and surgical equipment has a particular emphasis on the tools used in minimally invasive surgical treatment.

In developing the company's new ultrasonic scalpel, the Harmonic Focus Curved Shear, Ethicon designers observed and recorded 21 different surgical procedures in various parts of the world. They also studied the ethnographic and cultural differences among operating rooms. What they learned helped shape the tool and its auxiliary features so that it would help solve the surgical problems, mostly involving neck and facial surgery, anywhere.

Battelle. This year the private, nonprofit research institute developed five of Ohio's 10 winners, either by itself at its Columbus headquarters and lab or in cooperation with partners. The company has "a very long-term view," said Carl Kohrt, president and chief executive. "We try to do some things that are useful in the near term, but we also take on very difficult problems that take several years."

He also considers Battelle a research center that "starts with people, very talented people with world-class research facilities." The focus includes energy, material, security and human health, and, Kohrt said, "we look for the intersection of new disciplines and look broadly for the unusual solution."

All that makes it a singularly productive mill for innovation, one of the biggest winners in the R&D 100's 46-year history.

The magazine's selection process is pretty rigorous, according to Studt of Advantage Media. Labs, research centers and companies nominate themselves, sometimes sending stacks of binders to make their case. The magazine staff sorts them and sends them to teams of 25 to 40 appropriate experts at universities, industry organizations and national labs around the world for recommendations.

The R&D staff and its consultants make the final choices and publish them each September. An awards banquet is held in Chicago in October.

Studt said that Ohio, along with the East Bay area of California, Boston and Cambridge, Mass., and the Washington, D.C., suburbs in Maryland and Virginia, is a frequent contributor.

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