Corporate Innovation
From his father, Ryan Grace inherited more than a love of fishing. He caught the invention gene as well. In 2007, Grace, the founding partner of Omaha-based Advent, LLP—an intellectual property, innovation and technology law firm with clients around the globe—teamed up with his father, Ted Grace, to come up with an invention that would…
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It’s all about connecting the dots for Lincoln agriculture tech startup RealmFive. Through a series of products, sensors and cloud technologies, RealmFive is bringing the latest in tech to farms around the world. “Our goal as a company is to connect and control all the things that our customers care about on the farm and…
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Joshua Armah, president of Wiase Research Institute and managing partner of Wiase Capital, got hit in the head with a baseball bat when he was 14 years old. A former Boy Scout turned teenage runaway on the streets of Atlantic City, New Jersey, he was trying to save his friend from a beatdown. Stepping up…
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Lizz Whitacre is co-founder of Pawlytics, a cloud-based operations software provider for animal shelters and rescues working to develop electronic health records for pets and build the world’s largest pet database. SPN recently spotlighted the company and its socially driven mission to use data to save as many animals as possible. It’s a mission that…
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Pawlytics founder Lizz Whitacre has four dogs, three cats, one ferret and two horses. The serial entrepreneur joked that the office of her Lincoln-based tech startup could double as a petting zoo. “Everything I’ve ever done has been related to trying to save animals, while trying to figure out how to make a bunch of…
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“Walk with, not by.” So goes the motto for Samaritan, a mobile app that helps users fight homelessness via direct, case-managed giving. It’s a slogan that eschews slacktivism for what might awkwardly be called “app-tivism”—the use of consumer apps to generate meaningful social action. More than just sharing news of a cause or signaling one’s…
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It wasn’t so long ago that the railroad ran on paper. Stacks and stacks of paper were used to keep track of the hundreds of thousands of rail cars that flowed through Union Pacific’s 23-state system. A slip of paper captured the customer’s property, each rail car’s schedule and final destination. It was the train…
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Leadership is defined in times of crisis. A leader earns their mark when they “gird and inspire people through difficult times,” wrote historian Nancy Koehn. Valmont Industries President and CEO Stephen G. Kaniewski has learned this firsthand through the trial-by-fire method. The tireless researcher, people person and technology leader at the helm of the Nebraska-born…
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Originally posted on the AIM Institute blog No one knows how the coronavirus pandemic will evolve, how long the economy will stay underwater, or even what recovery looks like. But the radical workplace upheaval and sudden ad hoc shift to remote technology over the past month suggest two truths: We need more tech talent. We…
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Erica Wassinger, Senior Director of Entrepreneurship & Innovation for the Greater Omaha Chamber, exerts considerable energy and influence helping entrepreneurs weather the storms of starting up. Her work as cofounder of The Startup Collaborative often brings her as close to founders as public health guidelines currently allow. For the past month, she’s been speaking with…
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