Chad Sorenson knows a thing or two about starting a business. He has helped create two of them. The first, Fluent Systems, developed a wireless, remote system for farmers to monitor how much anhydrous ammonia is in the fertilizer tank riding behind their tractor. The invention won Sorenson top honors – $10,000 – in the UW-Madisonâ??s Schoofs Prize for Creativity in 2000. Then he won an even bigger derby. Fluent Systems was sold in 2003 to Raven Industries, a publicly traded, South Dakota company, for $1.5 million, just 18 months after Sorenson earned his masterâ??s degree in business administration at UW-Madison. Now Sorenson is passing on his knowledge to a new crop of potential entrepreneurs. He is teaching a seminar at the UW-Madison College of Engineering on innovation and entrepreneurship, as part of the schoolâ??s Innovation Days.
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