Chamber Crowd Gets Examples Of Growing Through Innovation

The title of the presentation was "Encourage Growth Through Innovation," and the four speakers at Thursday's midday session at the Detroit Regional Chamber's Mackinac Policy Conference didn't disappont.

They provided example after example of nurturing enterprise through new ideas in the public and private sectors alike.

Take William U. Parfet, chairman and CEO of Mattewan-baed MPI Research Inc. Parfet, a member of the family that founded and ran Kalamazoo's Upjohn Co. before its buyout, purchased MPI, an animal testing lab with a tattered reputation, in 1995. After a few lean years -- "I know what macaroni and cheese tastes like," he said -- the company's growth has skyrocketed and its testing business has diversified.

It now has 1,600 employees, 60 percent with a bachelor's degree or better, 45 percent from Michigan universities and 20 percent from outside Michigan MPI plans to grow another 3,000 jobs in the next five years and is moving into drug discovery research from safety and efficacy.

And Parfet is a major Michigan booster.

"I absolutely love Michigan," he said. "The work ethic, the quality of life, the cost of living, the educational infrastructure."

University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman provided several examples of the way the university has fostered job creation. She said one study found that one out of 100 of its 6,000 entering students had already started a business in high school.

"I asked, what are we doing to encourage this entrepreneurial spirit? Or are we just beating it out of them," she said to a big laugh from the Grand Hotel Theatre crowd.

She said the university reacted by creating a whole raft of entrepreneurial programs, including the engineering college's mPowered Night of 1,000 Pitches, which saw more than 1,000 elevator pitches from would-be entrepreneurs in a single conference.

Coleman said UM veteran faculty is now being rewarded for tech transfer and spinouts in ways they weren't, and faculty has responded with 50 spinout companies the last five years.

Included were NanoBio, with a novel antibiotic treatment, which has attracted $90 million in venture capital the past five years; Lycera, a drug discovery company that recently got $36 million in venture capital, and Sakti3, a battery development company partnering with General Motors to get $15 million in federal money.

Domino's Pizza CEO (and occasionally mentioned political candidate) David Brandon talked about how his $6 billion-a-year company innovates to compete in a market of 71,000 pizza places in the United States. Included is new sandwich delivery and online ordering with a UPS-like "pizza tracker."

Finally, Robert V. Riney, executive vice president and COO at Henry Ford Health System, pointed out that "a culture of innovation starts with saying yes more often than saying no. It's lot's easier to say no but it kills organizational innovation."

He pointed to the Grand Rapids area as part of Michigan leveraging health care, research and education as an economic development tool. Henry Ford Health System in particular is partnering with the Dearborn Public Schools in Henry Ford Early College, a five year high school that offers a high school diploma and an associate's degree in a health field.

He also said Henry Ford Health has stepped outside the box to innovate -- for example, hiring a service expert from the Ritz-Carlton.

In the question-and-answer session, Parfet said MPI had established a Chinese subsidiary, but he sounded as though the United States is still more than competitive.

"Land is more expensive in Shanghai than it is in Mattewan," he said. "And three people educated at the University of Michigan, and I'd better put Western in there too, can do the work of 15 people in Shanghai."

Coleman admitted it's tough to recruit people to Michigan given the state's current awful national image, but said it's easier once you show them the cultural and natural amenities in the state. Parfet agreed.

She added: "Michigan can no longer afford an east-west divide."

Brandon also criticized using federal stimulus money simply to paper over the state's budget deficit, as well as state tendencies to pick hot industries for support. And he pointed out that small businesses that offer low wages initially don't always stay that way.