By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Oklahoma’s expanding innovation economy is having a significant and lasting effect on our state. Oklahoma’s entrepreneurs build companies and create jobs through the realization of their dreams, inventions and hard work. I wanted to contribute, and I wanted to learn — about innovation, about creating sources ofRead more
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By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman In today’s world, a state’s economic growth demands investment in innovation and high-tech industries — especially for a natural resource-rich state like ours that must leverage our existing resource base to diversify our economy for the future. It’s a straightforward proposition. If we believe that more andRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Augmented Reality, the interactive combination of real and computer generated worlds, has been around for a while. AR technologies superimpose a computer-generated text, image, or sound on the view of the real world. If you have pointed your iPhone camera at the night sky to see theRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019 The Oklahoman Sean and Scott Bauman, CEO and chief operating officer of biotechnology company IMMY, literally grew up in the family business. “There isn’t a job that my brother and I haven’t done,” Sean said, “from sweeping the floor to putting together bulk mailings, whatever needed to be done,Read more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman It’s really difficult to invent new drug therapies. Research and development can take decades. Once a potential drug appears viable, testing for safety and efficacy adds more years. At every stage, risk of failure is extreme. Ascend BioVentures, a pharmaceutical accelerator company, helps Oklahoma’s early stage therapeuticsRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019 The Oklahoman Each year on Memorial Day, we honor the military men and women who gave their lives serving our country. Memorial Day is so much more than just a day off work. It is an observation started 151 years ago by order of John Alexander Logan, a CivilRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman As I talk daily with Oklahoma’s entrepreneurs, elected officials and investors, I have yet to find one single person who does not agree that economic diversification is critical to our state’s future. However, as easy as it may be to gain agreement that economic diversification is aRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Oklahoma is a great place to live. Oklahoma is a great place to work. We are a state that seems ready to seize the moment and leverage the quality of life and business-friendly advantages here to add innovation and technology-based economic development to Oklahoma’s list of “greats.”Read more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman At i2E, we like to invest in life sciences companies. About 40 percent of our portfolio is in therapeutics, diagnostics and medical devices. We recognize the abundant opportunity for these types of startups in Oklahoma, and we have developed the staff, expertise and partnerships to commercialize technologiesRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman With a lot of applause and anticipation, we just concluded the 2019 Love’s Entrepreneur’s Cup, Oklahoma’s only statewide collegiate business plan and pitch competition. This is the competition’s fifteenth year. Hundreds of Oklahomans are involved. A dedicated cadre of business leaders, investors, public sector officials, as wellRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Spring is an inspiring time of year around i2E as we enter the final phase of the 2019 Love’s Cup statewide collegiate business plan competition. Oklahoma owes a huge thank you to Love’s Travel Stops for sponsoring the competition, formerly known as the Governor’s Cup and nowRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman When Gov. Kevin Stitt announced his vision for making Oklahoma a Top 10 State, those of us representing the Oklahoma Innovation Model — comprising OCAST (Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science & Technology), the Oklahoma Manufacturing Alliance (OMA), Oklahoma State University New Product Development Center (NPDC)Read more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Innovate. Innovate. Innovate. That’s the common theme in today’s economy. Innovation stimulates entrepreneurship. Successful entrepreneurship creates net new jobs. Driving innovation through collaboration to create jobs is the entire reason for being of the public-private consortium of the Oklahoma Center for the Advancement of Science and TechnologyRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman I always tell every new company that I talk to: You have to crawl before you walk and walk before you run. The same thing applies to the capital path. The great thing for startups in this state is that The Oklahoma Innovation Model, which is uniqueRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © (2019), The Oklahoman I learn something new practically every day in this job. For example, did you know that Oklahoma has a state meal? According to the Oklahoma Historical Society website, that spread includes chicken-fried steak, barbecued pork, fried okra, squash, cornbread, grits, corn, sausage with biscuits and gravy, black-eyedRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman In the business of creating new high-growth companies, “trade-off” is the name of the game. From idea to IPO, from survival mode to success, entrepreneurship calls for constant prioritizing and re-prioritizing. With limited capital — financial and human — for the first few years of a startup’sRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman This summer marks the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing — the NASA mission that made Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin the first human beings to walk on a planetary body that wasn’t Earth. Of all the Apollo 11 lore, one of my favorite storiesRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman As Oklahomans, we live with pumps. We draw most of our water from out of the ground; we’re used to seeing pumpjacks bobbing their grasshopper-shaped heads all over the state. So, when somebody says “prime the pump” we understand the metaphor in a very real-world way. “PrimeRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman Regardless of the state you live in or where your children go to school, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) skills are the key to career opportunities today and will be exponentially more important over the next five years. In Oklahoma, as in every other state, weRead more
By Scott Meacham Copyright © 2019, The Oklahoman For a young company, it’s never easy and the hard work is never over. It’s a long, difficult battle full of fits and starts and failure before success. That’s why it is especially inspiring when an Oklahoma startup sprints out ahead of the pack and continues toRead more
