Innovation is the confluence of inspiration and need. Enter Concordia Fibers.
The 86-year-old Coventry firm profiled in this week’s Technology Monthly section, after reinventing itself, has returned to profitability.
The company has been designing and manufacturing yarns and fibers for technical fabrics throughout its history. It created a yarn strong and flexible enough, for example, to be used by BMW in its airbags. Despite that innovation, however, the company was facing a shrinking customer base and certain layoffs.
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Three years ago, therefore, it launched into a new business, creating biomedical products. It has acquired the rights to a product called “Biofelt” that, when inserted into human tissue, creates a framework for cells to grow and create new tissue structures.
In the burgeoning field of biotechnology, Concordia may well be a success story in the making.
The key, of course, is innovation. It is the centerpiece of the R.I. Economic Development Corporation’s vision for the state, as exemplified by its Business Innovation Factory. To acknowledge the good, creative work that is being done, Providence Business News has joined with the RIEDC to inaugurate and co-sponsor the Rhode Island Innovation Awards.
Let us know of individuals or companies that are fostering innovation. Contact PBN at carson@pbn.com with your candidates. We firmly believe that by celebrating innovation, we will create more of it, and the state’s economic health will benefit.
Lack of industrial space is getting old
Once again, Rhode Island has lost a good employer, at least in part because it lacked a facility large enough to accommodate it.
This time it was Heritage Kayaks, an eight-year-old manufacturer of kayaks in Bristol with 30 full-time employees. Heritage was bought by Legacy Paddlesports of North Carolina, which wants to grow the company to 250 employees by 2008, with operations consolidated in one place. The options were Rhode Island and North Carolina, and Rhode Island came in second.
Certainly many factors were weighed, but Legacy’s CEO told PBN that the fact that they found a building in North Carolina that was just the right size, at the right price, and ready for occupancy outweighed all other considerations.
How many more jobs must Rhode Island lose before the state’s leaders realize that the market needs a little help to remedy this ongoing problem? We’re not talking about a public works program. Why not try targeted tax credits for developers of industrial space? The investment on the front end would be recouped quickly as more jobs started coming into the state, rather than leaving.
