Entrepreneur Mark Darrah and his wife, Lyn, left Iowa 35 years ago because they were unable to use their degrees in advanced biomedical technology from Iowa State University within the state. In 2007, they returned from Southern California to Des Moines to launch Athena GTX to produce leading-edge medical monitoring devices they initially developed for […]
Co-founder and CEO Arsalan Lodhi likes to compare agtech startup Wisran to public utilities metering. Without water or gas meters, Lodhi said, communities would have no way to track the waste of resources incurred by residents, and costs would look much different. “The same concept and principles we are bringing to farming operations,” Lodhi said, […]
How can a regional health care organization with operations in three states and some 32,000 employees become more innovative? Iowa-based UnityPoint Health — the 13th-largest nonprofit health system in the country — decided it would build a mechanism to empower its employees to think like entrepreneurs, by developing a center to rapidly evaluate ideas submitted […]
The 2018 edition of innovationIOWA magazine was unveiled at Corteva Agriscience. See the presentation and hear from this year’s award winners Sukup Manufacturing and Robert Riley. Plus, get the magazine here!
The Business Record announces the honorees of the 2018 innovationIOWA awards. Sheffield-based Sukup Manufacturing is the recipient of the Corteva Agriscience, Agriculture Division of DowDuPont innovationLEADER award. The company employs nearly 600 and is a three-generation family business that began with Eugene Sukup in 1962. “Innovation is critical to its rapid growth today and into […]
As you drive along Iowa’s highways in farming communities, the corrugated-metal exteriors of grain bins gleam in the sun or stand as agricultural sentinels amid storms and the state’s weather fluctuations. Many bear the name “Sukup,” a three-generation Iowa company that has grown into an international leader in grain bins, grain dryers and steel buildings. […]
For Robert Riley, innovation is looking at Iowa’s lush summertime landscape as a photosynthesis machine feeding the world. It’s about creating food additives from corn oils and other materials at his flagship company, Feed Energy, while working day and night to improve the environment that corn is grown in. Riley knows the glacier-stirred soil needs […]