Category: Business/Technology

A deal appears to be in the works to straighten out the troubled downtown music venue Luther’s Blues, but there is confusion about who is currently running the show.

“We want to improve the tarnished image of the place. It is definitely tarnished,” said Michael Loveless, who lives in Seattle, Wash., and is calling himself one of the new owners.

Employees walked out, creditors say they went unpaid, and the phone lines were disconnected for a time.

It wasn’t long ago that Luther’s was the darling of the local club scene. It opened in late 2000, just a few months before the fire that destroyed O’Cayz Corral, and rose to prominence as one of a handful of live downtown music venues.

A change of operators appears to be in the works for the club at 1401 University Ave., and a power struggle has ensued. How it plays out remains to be seen, and the straight story is elusive.

With more than 250 buildings, 153 departments, 41,500 students, scores of labs, dozens of consortiums and a head-spinning number of faculty and researchers, the UW-Madison campus can be an intimidating place to navigate.

“We’ve got a large number of resources for business people, but people often don’t know where to turn,” said Noel Radomski, a policy and planning analyst in the university’s Office of Corporate Relations (OCR).

Lessons in business and philanthropy aren’t usually taught together. But a new class that just wrapped up at the UW- Madison School of Business showed MBA candidates that they can apply entrepreneurial skills to social problems.

Students who took the class “Social Entrepreneurship: Redefining Markets and Organizations” said the course opened their eyes to a world possibilities.

A new online database has been launched by the Office of Corporate Relations at UW-Madison to provide businesses and others with another tool to identify and access resources and services at the university.

The Wisconsin Business Resources Database contains links to nearly 100 offices on the Madison campus, and has a growing list of other campuses in the University of Wisconsin System. Its Web address is www.wbrd.wisc.edu.

Middleton-based Bone Care International Inc., a drug-maker that has seen its sales soar in the past two years, agreed to be bought by Genzyme Corp. for about $719 million in cash, the companies announced Wednesday. Bone Care was founded in 1987 as a division of Lunar Corp., which grew out of bone research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was later bought by GE Medical Imaging.

Trevor Twose says he thoroughly enjoyed his days as a post-doctoral researcher at UW-Madison in the early 1970s.

“Those were interesting times for a number of reasons,” says Twose, a wry smile washing over his lean face. “Molecular biology was just breaking through. My work mostly focused on drug resistance in bacteria.”

After watching his two older brothers struggle to find work when they graduated in 2001 and 2003, fifth-year psychology major Adam Miller was prepared for a trying job hunt of his own.

But he said he started to relax when companies began contacting him in January after seeing his resume on a UW- Madison job site.

UW-Madison Business School Dean Michael Knetter also has noticed an increased interest in ethics, both from students and the general public.

“What’s changed is people are asking us about it now,” he said. “Students bring a heightened awareness of that coming in, relative to where they were before.”

Student surveys and a program review have led to major curriculum revisions in the Evening MBA program (EvMBA) at the UW-Madison School of Business.

Starting in fall 2005, incoming students will be part of a new program, streamlined and more geared to international perspectives and concerns, said Linda Uitvlugt, director of operations for the program.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison will build a coalition of colleges to encourage apparel makers to disclose more about where they make their products.

Chancellor John Wiley met on Wednesday afternoon with current and former members of the university’s Labor Licensing Committee. The committee is charged with advising Wiley’s office on matters of UW-logo licensed apparel.

Leaders from business, government, non-profits and education are aiming to grow Dane County’s economy while preserving and advancing the quality of life here by working together in the Collaboration Council.

(Chancellor John Wiley is quoted in this story.)

James Burgess, former publisher of the Wisconsin State Journal and executive vice president of Lee Enterprises, has made a $1 million gift to the UW-Madison School of Journalism to establish an endowed professorship in ethics.

The James E. Burgess Ethics in Journalism Chair will be part of an envisioned center devoted to issues of fairness, accuracy and integrity in the media. A nationwide search is planned to award the chair.

Issues of ethics in journalism, thrust into the spotlight by recent scandals, will soon have a more prominent place at the UW-Madison School of Journalism and Mass Communication, thanks to a $1 million gift from former Wisconsin State Journal Publisher James Burgess.

Madison, Wis. ââ?¬â? A drug-delivery patch took first place and $10,000 in the G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan Competition, the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s annual contest for student entrepreneurs.

Pedrus Pharma, a University of Wisconsin-Madison spinout that has sped to the finals in the Governor’s Business Plan Contest, may put a stop to the annual flu vaccine hoopla, among other things.

Cities across the country have taken steps to stop doing business with firms that deal in goods made in sweatshops, and Madison needs to join the coalition of conscience.

District 8 Ald. Austin King, fresh from his landslide re-election in April 5 local voting, wants the city to set a standard that says no public funds will be used to purchase “goods made under the deplorable, inhumane conditions of a sweatshop.”

A total of $22,000 in prize money is available in an annual competition at UW-Madison showcasing student entrepreneurs’ innovative business ideas.

Fourteen teams of UW-Madison students will compete in the G. Steven Burrill Technology Business Plan Competition in Grainger Hall, 975 University Ave., on Friday. The event is open to the public with the winning team, which will receive $10,000, announced at 5:45 p.m.

Janet Jackson nearly took down the newspaper that made Madison famous.

During a University of Wisconsin-Madison campus lecture Monday night, former Onion Editor in Chief Robert Siegel said the singer nearly took the satirical newspaper to court after a crude 1990s story about a boy who was supposedly being granted a wish by the Make-a-Wish Foundation.

Sweeping changes starting this fall in the UW-Madison evening MBA program have it geared more toward international perspectives and concerns.

Along with major curriculum revisions, a big addition is an international trip in the second year of the three-year program, said Linda Uitvlugt, director of operations for the program.

Beginning next year, most students in the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s evening MBA program will take an international trip as part of their studies.

“One of my dreams is to take a year off and sail around the world,” says Charles Hoslet, Director of the UW’s Office of Corporate Relations (OCR). “I’m certainly not at the point where I’m going to check out for a year, but it’s definitely on the list of things I want to do,” the UW Exec says. In the meantime, Hoslet is at the helm of the UW–Madison office designed as the link between business needs in the Badger State and the resources on the UW-Madison campus. Still in its infancy, OCR will celebrate its second anniversary in July.

In a word, Michael Knetter is impatient.

When he took the reins of the UW-Madison Business School nearly three years ago, he made improving the quality and reputation of the school’s graduate program his top priority.

As the regional economy continues its recovery, a growing number of economic development organizations are working together to foster a new generation of Wisconsin startups that they hope will fuel the state’s economic growth.

“Rather than look at it as there are all these different groups that are doing all these different things, instead we’re starting to really bring people together,” said Joe Kremer, director of Wisconsin Angel Network, a nonprofit group aimed at connecting local businesses with regional investors.

Kremer was one of a handful of panelists who addressed about 80 representatives from the professional services industry Tuesday at University Research Park.

Yikes.

What to make of the new report that young people are leaving Madison in droves?

…the report raises some interesting questions about whether Madison is as hip and cool today for young people as it was for the Vietnam era Baby Boomers. The numbers seem to suggest it isn’t.