Category: News

Nissan today broke ground on the project that will eventually bring production of the Nissan LEAF electric-vehicle to the United States. The groundbreaking celebration marks the beginning of construction of the company’s Smyrna, Tenn., plant that will produce lithium-ion batteries that power the Nissan LEAF. The LEAF it self will be manufactured in Smyrna at the beginning of 2012.

“Nissan is committed to affordable, sustainable mobility. What we’re doing here will radically transform the automotive experience for consumers. Today is a major step in helping create a green economy in the United States,” said Carlos Ghosn, president and CEO of Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. “Production of Nissan LEAF and lithium-ion batteries in Smyrna brings the United States closer to its goal of energy independence, creates green jobs and helps sustain American manufacturing. Nissan is a leader in global manufacturing innovation, and this state-of-the-art battery plant will strengthen that leadership.”

Click here for more news on the Nissan Leaf.

Nissan said that the production of the batteries and the LEAF will create up to 1,300 jobs when the plant is operating at full capacity. At full capacity, the plant will be capable of producing 200,000 advanced-technology batteries annually. The vehicle plant located adjacent to that will be retooled to make room for production of Nissan LEAF and will be capable of pumping out 150,000 electric cars annually.

The total investment in Smyrna comes out to $1.7 billion, which initially is being supported by a U.S. Department of Energy loan for 80 percent of that investment, up to $1.4 billion.

2011 Nissan Leaf:

– By: Omar Rana

After nearly a decade on the market, someone has finally gotten beer-goggled enough to plunk down the cash to purchase Pabst Brewing Co. According to reports, the deal went down for an ice-cold $250 million, though for only a dollar more they could have gotten a shot of Jameson to go along with it.

Pabst, which not only has the loved/loathed Pabst Blue Ribbon brand, but also Schlitz, Old Style, Lone Star and Colt 45, had been owned by the Kalmanovitz Charitable Foundation, but federal law prohibits charities from owning for-profit businesses for more than five years.

The Foundation had been ordered to sell the company by 2005, but got a 5-year extension from the IRS.

The reported buyer of the brewer — the #5 suds supplier in the U.S. — is C. Dean Metropoulos, who has made his name managing big-time brands like Bumble Bee Tuna, Vlasic Pickles, Chef Boyardee, Duncan Hines and Ghirardelli Chocolates.

Woodridge-based Pabst Brewing to get new owner [Chicago Breaking News]

—Player X: Co-founder and CEO Tony Pearce is leaving to explore new opportunities. Six months ago he sold the company to Zed Worldwide.

—Smule: The company, responsible for such iPhone apps as “I am T-Pain” and “Leaf Trombone,” has appointed three new executives to its rankings. Scott Bonds is VP of engineering, Sunil Pareenja is CFO and Jim Routh is VP of business development. Despite any lack of musical talent, the company ensures that they are all rock stars at business. Bonds most recently served as senior development director at Electronic Arts; (NSDQ: ERTS) Pareenja previously served as VP of finance at Engine Yard; and Routh spent the first seven years of his career at Apple.

—Booyah: The MyTown app creator has closed a $20 million funding round and added Jim Breyer, a partner at Accel Partners, to its board of directors. Breyer is also the lead and presiding director of Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) Stores and a director of Dell. Last week Richard Yanowitch, a former News Corp (NYSE: NWS). senior consultant, joined as independent director to its board of directors.

As women celebrate a century of the bra (the undergarment we love to hate), a product is finally available for the ladies that insist on nuzzling their belongings up to their tatas so they don’t have to drag a bulky purse along for a big night out on the town. Admit it, Girls…We all do it — stuff a couple of dollars in there, or maybe your credit card or ID before a night of bar-hopping with the chicas. Hell, some of girls even keep leftovers close to their bosoms to munch on later! (I kid – I kid…)

For those occasions when your favorite clutch just won’t do, we present The Cleavage Caddy. It’s a bag in your boobs! You can put everything but the kitchen sink in this bad boy — designed by Laura McLauren, who created the wacky fashion must-have after searching for a low-maintenance way to transport life’s little essentials.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

“An insert for your bra with or without an added lace accent to to enhance your attire with a feminine influence. If you choose the lace version, the lace covers your cleavage, adding an extra element of modesty, while still allowing you to carry all of your personal items discretely tucked in your bra. These are worn anchored to the bra by the elastic strap with a snap. Tuck away your keys, credit cards, lipstick and more….”

CLICK HERE To Order Your Cleavage Caddy — a $29.95 value — Grab One For Your Next Costume Party!

I’m sick and tired of hearing about how you should be producing “content” to attract a web following. Treating content as a category on its own is missing the point entirely. Nobody cares about content. Nobody wakes up in the morning and thinks, hey, I should read some content today.

What people want is opinions, analysis, techniques, experiences, and insights. The best of all these come as a bi-product from actually doing stuff. The closer you are to the topics, the more natural you’ll be able to extract the goodies.

This also means that it’s hard to schedule. You can’t put neatly into timeslots when you’re going to be annoyed, ecstatic, disappointed, have a great insight or discover a new awesome technique.

The great thing is that it doesn’t really matter that much anyway whether you follow a tight schedule. Between Twitter, RSS, and the aggregator sites, good stuff usually bubbles to the top regardless.

So no more content, please.

Scientists at a Korean research organization are in line for a financial windfall for developing a new process to make advanced compound metals used in everything from laptop computers to automobiles. The Korean Institute of Industrial Technology (Kitech) revealed that a 10-member team led by scientist Kim Se-gwang will receive 16.9 billion won ($15 million) for the successful transfer of the technology to the private sector. A midsize company called HMK has agreed to pay the Institute 28.2 billion won for access to the technology, which involves making magnesium and aluminum compounds in a safer, more environmentally friendly manner. HMK will pay five billion won in a lump sum and the remainder in phases over the next 15 years.

The deal ranks as the third largest in Korea for the transfer of technology from a government research institute to the private sector. According to Korean regulations governing tech transfer, at least half of the proceeds of such deals should be funneled to researchers. Some institutions are even more generous. For instance, Kitech grants its researchers 60% of the proceeds. As lead researcher, Kim will be responsible for distributing the 16.9 billion won in incentives to his team. He personally stands to receive 60% of the total, or roughly 10 billion won.

The research team’s process for developing magnesium compound metals could be a game-changer in the industry. Magnesium weighs one-fourth as much as steel but is six times as hard, making it ideal for portable electronics such as mobile phones and notebook computers as well as automobiles. However, magnesium also carries the risk of explosion, and it can rust easily when it comes in contact with water so it must be mixed with other metals to create alloys. Until now, harmful gases like sulfur hexafluoride, dubbed a “super greenhouse gas,” and sulfur dioxide — which is harmful to humans and corrodes steel — had been used to produce magnesium alloys. The technology developed by Kim and colleagues incorporates calcium oxide in the compounding process to create a protective layer, eliminating the risks of corrosion and explosion.

Source: JoongAng Daily

Recently, Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz forecasted trouble for Google because search accounts for “99.9% of their business.” In a talk with Michael Arrington today, Google’s President of Global Sales Operations Nikesh Arora leveled this response. Giddyup. More »










Google – Search – Search Engines – Companies – Yahoo

A U.K. drug development firm has raised £9.6 million from private equity investors, including £2m from Scottish Enterprise, to fund partnerships with university researchers. TPP Global Development, founded by former Morgan Stanley fund manager Peter Trill and Oxford University scientist Dr. Tom Brown, has chosen Edinburgh’s BioQuarter as its base. The pair will assess molecules created by scientists in universities and research institutions and then license the substances that show the most potential for creating new drugs.

TPP will guide the molecules through the “biotech funding gap” between basic research and drug development before setting up spinout companies to refine the drugs or licensing them out to bigger firms. The firm’s focus includes oncology; nervous system disorders such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and multiple sclerosis; and inflammations and immunology, including asthma and rheumatoid arthritis.

Finance director Trill said TPP was attracted to Scotland because of its universities, contract research organizations, and the cluster being created at Edinburgh’s BioQuarter. Trill expects TPP to benefit from cutbacks in early-stage drug development work at major pharmaceutical groups. “There has always been a funding shortfall for early-stage research,” he adds. “This will become ever more acute as the pharma industry continues to reduce spending on preclinical research, instead looking to in-license late-stage preclinical drugs, and the economic environment puts pressure on government and medical charity research funding.”

Source: Scotsman.com Business

Social media is fast-becoming an integral part of the marketing landscape, and the relatively low cost and wide reach — when used effectively — can be a godsend for cash-strapped tech transfer offices. Blogging, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube, Plaxo, and many other social medial avenues offer near limitless opportunities to push your available innovations in front of an eager audience. To help you effectively utilize these new marketing tools, our Distance Learning Division has brought together an international panel of experts who are successfully employing social media to garner attention for their technologies, create an active community surrounding their innovations, and bring more licensees in the door. Join us on June 8th for TTOs: Use Social Media Effectively to Market Your Innovations, an interactive, 90-minute webinar that’s chock full of best practices for effectively utilizing a myriad of social media platforms. You’ll see real-time online examples, plus dozens of planning techniques and execution strategies that are guaranteed to successfully showcase your IP. CLICK HERE for complete program and faculty details >>

PLUS: Check out these additional upcoming distance learning programs:

• Every Thursday beginning June 3: SPECIAL 6-PART SERIES: Start-Up Boot Camp for University TTO Professionals and Inventors >>
• Tuesday, June 15: The Perfect Elevator Pitch: Sell Your IP in 3 Minutes or Less! >>
• Tuesday, July 13: Prevent Faculty Disputes from Turning Into a Declaration of War >>

Greenpeace’s relentless march toward reminding us that we’re killing the planet continues. The organization released its annual “Who’s Green?” list yesterday, and Nokia and Sony Ericsson get A+ marks, while Lenovo and Nintendo are, apparently, the dregs of society. Also on the wrong side of Greenpeace: Dell. The Texas-based company found itself on the wrong end of a rather impressive Greenpeace action yesterday. Oh, dear…

Greenpeace’s main issue with Dell is that the company promised, some time ago, to eliminate certain toxic chemicals from its manufacturing processes. Dell hasn’t honored its promise, said Greenpeace, so out comes the giant yellow scroll on the Dell building in Round Rock, TX.

It should be noted that no company is 100 percent green yet in the eyes of Greenpeace. Nokia is the closest with a score of 7.5/10.

The very worst? Nintendo with a score of 1.8/10.

Microsoft gets a 3.3/10 and Apple gets a 4.9/10.

The entire report is available for you to read here [PDF alert!]. Better make some tea beforehand: it’s a long one.

Flickr’d

Here’s a fantastic chart showing the performance of the various equity markets in Europe. Hedgeye analyst Matthew Hedrick warns of a “contagion drag” and how as Germany is forced to foot the lion’s share of the bill for European bailouts, the situation will continue weigh on Germany’s capital markets.

Hedgeye: As part of our Q2 theme Sovereign Debt Dichotomy, we advised that one possible play on sovereign debt risk in Europe is to be paired off long Germany and short Spain.  Our bullish thesis on Germany included a tighter fiscal balance sheet than many of its European peers, the advantage of a weaker Euro for an export-heavy economy, low inflation, and a stable rate of employment. While we’ve seen significant divergence in the underlying German and Spanish equity markets over the last weeks, including a spread as wide as 2000bps between the DAX and IBEX 35 on May 7th, the increasingly larger share of the ‘bill’ that Germany will bear for the Eurozone’s collective bailout is bearish for German capital markets (see chart 1 below). 

While the German unemployment rate remains positive, declining in the latest reading to 7.8% (versus the Eurozone average of 10% and 20% in Spain) and is underpinned by the government’s successful part-time labor programs, contagion from European sovereign debt risk persist despite the $1Trillion European loan/debt buy-up facility issued on 5/9. Additionally, Germany’s unilateral ban on naked short selling on 5/25 is adding fuel to the fire and enhancing market volatility.

On the margin, the fundaments we’re following in Germany and the broader stock market suggest a downward reversion to the mean, especially as risk in Europe (and globally) is pushed further out. One area to look to for confirmation of this is the bond market (chart 4), where we’re starting to see German yields rise.

Join the conversation about this story »

At our peak auto purchasing capacity, Americans bought an average of 17 million cars almost every year from 1997 to 2007. That means in just ten years, 170 million cars were added to the road, and far fewer were scrapped. In fact, 2009 was the first year in four decades where Americans scrapped significantly more cars than they bought. 14 million autos were sent to the scrapyard (helped in no small part by Cash for Clunkers), while Americans bought just 10 million new vehicles.

Over in China though, the auto industry is going through unprecedented growth. After outpacing U.S. sales in 2009, analysts are estimating Chinese consumers could buy between 15 and 17 million new cars in 2010. And that number is only going to grow.

(more…)

Composting is the ultimate act of green frugality, turning unwanted organic material into rich humus for use in the garden rather than sealing it in plastic trash bags to spend eternity in a landfill. But for some of us, composting is something even more special — a hobby, a passion, almost a religion. I’ve even named my beloved compost pile; “Gomer,” as in Gomer Pyle (get it?).

As compost enthusiasts say, “A rind is a terrible thing to waste.” But composting fruit and veggie rinds and other trimmings, along with leaves, grass clippings, shredded paper, and cardboard is only the beginning.

Here are some compostable items you might not think about:

Dryer lint
If you must dry your clothes in an electric clothes dryer (it significantly shortens the lifespan of many garments, plus wastes energy and money) instead of using a clothesline, at least compost the lint.

Hair and fur
With my receding hairline, I don’t have a lot of my own hair to share with Gomer, but our four cats shed enough to make up for it. Hair adds nitrogen and other beneficial nutrients to compost.

Fireplace ashes
Wood ashes (including ashes from charcoal made from wood) help to retain moisture in the compost pile. Wood ashes also contain potassium, a major plant nutrient that can be beneficial depending on the soil type.

Jell-O (gelatin)
“There’s always room for Jell-O.” I recently found a bowl of old, rubberized Jell-O in the back of the fridge and decided to give it Gomer as a special treat.

Cotton, wool, and silk clothing/fabric
After a long and productive second-life as dust rags, worn-out clothing made of natural fibers will decompose faster if you shred them before composting.

Full vacuum cleaner bags
Paper vacuum cleaner bags and their contents — as well as all species of non-synthetic dust bunnies — are welcome in the compost pile.

Nail clippings
The byproducts of pedicures, manicures, and even pet nails — are all compostable, provided that they’re polish-free.

Rope and string
Rope and twine made out of natural fibers (e.g., cotton, hemp, jute, and manila ropes) will decompose in the compost pile.

Leather goods and clothing
From leftover lederhosen to a leather glove that lost its mate, natural leather products will decompose (albeit slowly) in the compost pile.

Skunky beer, wine, and corks
Gomer likes a brewski once in awhile. Leftover alcohol (if such a thing exists) can be added to the compost pile, as can the corks from the bottles.

Pet food leftovers
Dry dog, cat, and fish food is OK for the compost pile (bury it in the pile to deter rodents and other unwanted pests), and even too-chewed rawhide dog chews can be composted.

Spoiled milk and dairy products
Meat products are generally a compost pile no-no, but spoiled dairy products like moldy cheese, sour milk, and yogurt are okay.

White glue and masking tape
Check for toxic ingredients, but most white glues (like Elmer’s brand) and paper masking tape can be composted. (by the way, Post-It-Notes can be, too.)

Teabags and coffee grounds
Of course at our house, we use them at least twice before they’re ready for the compost pile. And remember that paper coffee filters can be composted too.

Latex condoms and cotton/cardboard feminine hygiene products
Yes, it’s true. Yes, it’s gross.

Cotton balls and Q-Tips
Just make sure that your cotton swabs like Q-Tips are 100% cotton and have cardboard or wooden sticks (NOT plastic).

Seaweed/kelp
If you live on an ocean or other waterway and your shoreline is being invaded by washed up seaweed or kelp, add it to the compost pile — it’s often used in organic fertilizers.

Eggshells
Eggshells have many great uses around the house and garden, but composting them is an eggcellent idea, too, since they add calcium to the soil.

Stale bread and other grain products
Of course, I have too many other uses for stale bread to go feeding it to Gomer, but leftover grain-based food products, including pasta, rice, cereal, crackers, pizza crusts, etc., can be composted (again, bury them in the pile to deter unwanted pests).

Organic holiday decorations
If you’re not going to eat your Halloween jack-o-lantern like I do, it can be composted, along with wreaths and pine boughs from Christmas, latex balloons from birthday parties, and that long-dead bouquet you paid too much for at Valentine’s Day. Next year, try planting a rose bush for her instead, using the compost from your own Gomer.

Jeff Yeager is the author of the book The Ultimate Cheapskate’s Road Map to True Riches and the forthcoming The Cheapskate Next Door. His website is www.UltimateCheapskate.com. Follow Jeff Yeager on Twitter and friend Jeff on Facebook. Friend TDG on Facebook and follow TDG on Twitter.

More from The Daily Green

• 10 Ways to Spruce Up Your Outdoors
• How to Start an Organic Garden
• Easy Container Gardening for Any Space
• Everything You Need for Glorious Gardens
• Real People Making a Difference

Reprinted with permission of Hearst Communications, Inc

Our own Gregory White appeared on Russia Today’s The Alyona Show discussing the current economic situation in Europe and how the austerity programs, which have already be enacted in Europe, will soon be enacted in the U.S.

Join the conversation about this story »

By Scott M. Fulton, III, Betanews

A nationwide service outage continues to impact customers of AT&T’s VoIP-based U-Verse Voice service — users of its fiber-to-the-home TV and broadband network for phone service as well. Now home-based VoIP phone users are waiting in Internet chat queues numbering hundreds of users long seeking solutions, and at least a few customers are reporting they’re waiting on hold from their (working) Verizon Wireless phones.

Users of AT&T’s U-talk Peer-to-Peer Forum are being advised to register their complaints with someone named “David” in the company’s Tier 2 Technical Support office. This as users in Memphis, Atlanta, Chicago, Houston, and elsewhere continue to report no service, although customers in some metropolitan areas such as Sacramento report service has been restored.

Though there has been no official explanation, customers who have gotten through to support personnel have been advised that the cause is some sort of server outage. That diagnosis would appear to be contradicted by evidence that service has been restored to some areas while still down in others; and also that the outage does not appear to affect TV or broadband service.

In lieu of an official word, news of the service outage was first confirmed by contributors to Broadband Reports, then later broadcast over the Associated Press wire. One form of the AP story reads that AT&T restored service to its customers by 2:45 pm ET Wednesday afternoon. Although the AP story contained a dateline of 5:57 pm CT / 6:57 pm ET Wednesday evening, the story actually ran at around noon Wednesday — almost three hours prior to the time in which the story reports services were restored.

“Funny how AT&T doesn’t communicate with transparency,” one U-talk forum commenter noted. “An announcement on their website would go a long way in fostering confidence in their service and their ability to serve their clientele.”

AT&T estimated last January that the number of U-verse customers also subscribing to U-verse Voice surpassed the 1 million mark that month; U-verse service itself currently reaches 2 million customers according to AT&T’s December 2009 estimates. Today’s service outage may give more impetus to a growing number of those 1 million customers who say they may cancel their Voice service, after having planned to pay fixed rates of $25 or $40 per month extra and ending up paying more.

Last week, prior to the service outage, an AT&T U-verse customer reported to the company’s forum of having told the carrier’s customer representative, “If prices keep going up we will get rid of everything. Our bill has been running $162 and some change. We don’t watch that much TV especially this time of year, and with BlackBerrys don’t use the home Internet much either. As such, we are finding it hard to part with the money for what we get in return. We are looking into an antenna and setting up a computer with media center as a DVR with Netflix subscription.”

Copyright Betanews, Inc. 2010
















AT&T U-verse – Verizon Wireless – Telecommunication – Netflix – Voice over Internet Protocol

Ford is all about its “kinetic” design language; however, in the past the brand has felt somewhat restricted in pushing its creativity to the limits. According to J Mays, Ford’s group vice president for design and its chief creative officer, the sale of former PAG (Premier Automotive Group) brands including Jaguar, Land Rover, Aston Martin and Volvo has allowed designers to be a little more… well “creative.”

Mays said that it was difficult to oversee the designs of several different marquees.

“It was like painting the Golden Gate Bridge. I would get to one end and the other end would already start rusting, so I’d run back and start going again,” he said. “I was an inch deep and a mile wide. I would go from one review to the next, and then start the whole thing over again.”

Mays says that since Ford dropped PAG and pursuing its global vehicle strategy, designers have been able to explore their desires in kinetic design.

“There’s a huge array of creativity afforded to our design team,” he said. “Kinetic design applies to both exteriors and interiors, but there’s a framework that keeps them inside of the brand parameters.”

The most recent example of this was seen in the Ford Start Concept.

Ford Start Concept:

– By: Kap Shah

Source: AutoCar

The next Jetta, aka the New Compact Sedan, is almost ready to roll.

VW design once again is converging with Audi’s, as evidenced by these latest spy shots of the 2011 Volkswagen Jetta. But rather than swiping blatant cues like the horse-collar grille shape, as was done for the last-gen Jetta, this familial resemblance is based more on proportions and crisp lines. Indeed, this Jetta prototype looks more than a little Audi A4–esque from most angles, although that’s not really a surprise. Since the first VW Jetta appeared in the early 1980s as a wimpy four-door Rabbit derivative, the Jetta has been on an upward march in class and elegance. And based on what we saw at this year’s Detroit auto show in the form of the fetching NCC hybrid concept, the newest one would be perhaps the best-looking yet.

Keep Reading: 2011 Volkswagen Jetta Nearly Undisguised – Spied

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Seven years ago, Global Velocity’s data security technology was an interesting invention in Washington University’s Advanced Research Lab. Now it’s the basis of a company with 17 employees, $21 million in funding from investors, and the beginnings of a commercial customer base. The path that Global Velocity has taken from university lab to growing company is not a well-worn one in St. Louis. For various reasons, ranging from a lack of funding sources to a conservative, risk-averse local culture, university-linked start-ups have been relatively rare here. It’s certainly not for a lack of inventiveness. When research universities are ranked by federal grants received or discoveries made, Washington-U often makes the top 10.

When it comes to transforming those discoveries into revenue-producing businesses, though, the university falls to the middle of the pack. In a 2006 study by the Milken Institute, Washington-U was No. 8 on a measure of basic biotechnology research but No. 66 on a measure of technology transfer and commercialization. Although Bradley Castanho, the university’s assistant vice chancellor for research, has the job of improving the latter score, creating companies isn’t something the school can do on its own. “It’s a push-pull exercise,” Castanho says. “You have to have somebody who’s an entrepreneur who sees the value of the technology and sees how it could become a viable business…. Our role is to put it in the hands of people who can be successful.”

The university has trained almost 50 faculty members in the basics of starting a business. Its Bear Cub Fund makes development grants of $25,000 to $50,000. A partnership with the BioGenerator, a privately funded technology development organization, gives biotech companies some mentoring and the opportunity for additional money. Castanho adds, however, that the community still needs to pull technology out of the university. He says the biggest difference between Washington University and an institution like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — No. 1 on Milken’s index — isn’t culture. Rather, it’s that MIT is surrounded by VCs and businesspeople who compete to spot lucrative opportunities. “From a community point of view, you need entrepreneurs, you need capital, and you need facilities to have a successful start-up,” Castanho says. “Some of those things are probably more challenging in a region like St. Louis that’s still coming up the learning curve.”

Source:  STLtoday.com

When it comes to founding spinouts, universities normally provide the technology while companies take on the business development. The School of Entrepreneurship at Sweden’s Chalmers University has reversed that flow, with the academic world picking up technology from industry and providing the business development needed to carry the innovation to market. To date, this business model has driven the creation of a portfolio of 50 companies valued at €70 million. In the case of the spinout Lamera, the model has proved to be especially efficient.

In 2004, the Volvo Group asked the School of Entrepreneurship to explore the potential of a technology previously invented in one of its labs. Engineers Mattias Grufberg and Anders Axelsson, then students in the school, were assigned to analyze the technology’s potential, write a business plan, and eventually launch a start-up as the basis of their Masters degrees. The technology, called Hybrix, was developed by Volvo researcher Roland Gustavsson to reduce the weight of Volvo cars without shifting from steel to aluminum, as many competitors had done. Inspired by the structure of birds’ bones, Hybrix is a “microsandwich” of hollow metal that looks and behaves like solid metal but is much lighter. Nevertheless, the innovation had never made the transition into the car plants.

Chalmers’ School of Entrepreneurship had developed a unique way to translate laboratory inventions into successful, marketed products. Every year, it launched five spinouts that transform students into real-life entrepreneurs. In its model, the owner of the IP — the Volvo Group in the case of Lamera — keeps 45% of the newly created company while the founding entrepreneurs and the university share the remaining 55%. “For students it means a job and ownership,” Grufberg explains. To be chosen as entrepreneurs, however, students must develop a solid business plan.

With oil prices starting to shoot up, Grufberg and Axelsson realized that any technology that could reduce the weight of planes, trucks, wagons, boats, and cars would be welcomed. Recognizing that the transport industries also have high barriers to entry, they focused on a niche. “In the car industry, a weight reduction of one kilo translates into savings between €5 and €15 over the lifespan of the vehicle,” Grufberg says. “But in the aircraft industry, one kilo less translates into a savings of between €100 and €140 on kerosene a year.” So a ton less on a 361-ton Airbus A380 saves €140,000 a year for the carriers. Given this value proposition, Lamera knew where to focus. With a technology that can reduce the weight of steel by 70% and aluminum by 30%, Grufberg and Axelsson had a clear business plan that convinced not only the Volvo Group but also Midroc New Technology — the venture arm of billionaire Mohammed el Amoudi — to take a stake in Lamera, which has raised €2 million to date. With its first factory ready to start shipping, Lamera also has proven the value of its business plan.

Source: Science Business