FEATURE
R&D FUNDING
This feature pitches a relationship with the U.S. government that you may never have considered: your partner. If a company has a truly innovative concept but is leery of costly R&D, Uncle Sam may be able to help. Ironically, the riskier the premise, the better your chances. It’s not literally free as there are internal costs (see p. 54), but the process does work (see below), and wire and cable awards have been issued. Further, it may be feasible to access outside technology (see p. 48/50), opening up future markets. These and other aspects are presented here.
Minnesota Wire: its R&D journey from kitchen table to satellites Founded in 1968, Minnesota Wire evolved from a bulk cable manufacturer to be a technology leader in fields such as medical and defense. That success was fueled by taking advantage of federal funding (16 awards over 12 years) for R&D. Below, company Chairman/CEO Paul Wagner explains how the metamorphosis came to be for a family business that was literally created at the kitchen table. At Minnesota Wire, we believe we’re quite unique compared to every other wire company, and frankly most small manufacturing firms. We decided back in the 1990s that innovation was essential to survive and thrive in a fast-paced economy. We weren’t going to be dictated to by the market. Instead, we reached pretty aggressively for a different future, and it was a risky stretch, to re-invent how we made electrical conductors and shields for our target markets of medical and defense technologies. We saw that these sectors were going to need vastly different electrical interconnect systems, not just variations of what had been done the same way for a century or more. In this journey, we faced, and embraced, three big challenges. Predicting market demand. This was the first challenge, and at the time the future was not so crystal clear. Internally, we felt comfortable in our assessment that conductors had to be lighter, more robust and offer even more added value, like built-in “smart” diagnostics, radar-absorbent components and assemblies that would not corrode over time. Further, we saw that wire had always been an afterthought for devices in these target markets.
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We concluded that making them central to the application design was the way to go. We were convinced that the market was ready Paul Wagner with a for us if we could deliver. CNT sample at work. The technology. The second challenge was how to get there from a technology perspective. We found much of the answer largely through our ground-breaking work with carbon nanotube (CNT) material. These connectivity products were lighter, non-corrosive and largely unknown to the wire and cable industry, yet they represented a unique way to match future designs for high tech products. They could also be more than just conductors, as they could serve as shielding for the interconnect assemblies. It was exciting to be driving the technology for our own products, rather than reacting to it. Funding. Finally, our vision was admittedly ambitious for a small, family-owned wire company in the Midwest.