Wisconsinâ??s agricultural industry has both high points and low points, according to a new UW-Extension report.
Farming currently generates more than $59-billion in economic activity, and employs several hundred thousand residents. That finding delights Steve Deller, a UW-Madison professor of agricultural economics and one of the reportâ??s authors. He says taking on niche markets and expanding beyond dairy has really helped Wisconsinâ??s farm industry.
The recording industry has settled a lawsuit against a University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point student accused of illegally downloading songs from the Internet.
Scientists who want to turn their research into biotechnology companies or who want to grow their young businesses may be able to tap into a new round of grant money.
The Wisconsin Department of Workforce Development DWD is providing a $100,000 grant, to be matched by $100,350 from BioForward, formerly the Wisconsin Biotechnology and Medical Device Association.
The funds are aimed at training up to 50 researchers and scientists to start a business and to compete in the global economy.
A branch of US Bank near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus was robbed Thursday morning by a thief who apparently fled the scene riding on a bicycle, Madison police reported.
Police said the robbery took place at about 9:40 a.m. at the bank at 389 East Campus Mall.
SAN FRANCISCO — Yahoo Inc. invested billions of dollars in its Internet search engine during the past six years before realizing it made more sense to entrust the job to an outsider — hearkening back to a conclusion the company’s co-founders reached shortly after they started their Web directory in the mid-1990s.
Quoted: Yahoo CEO and UW-Madison alumna Carol Bartz
“Yahoo’s 10-year deal with Microsoft to battle Google for online search customers and ad sales is the boldest initiative Carol Bartz has made since she became Yahoo’s CEO in January.”
That’s the lead on a USA Today story on Bartz, a University of Wisconsin-Madison grad who has risen to the top of the business world.
High school students are learning to use high-tech equipment to solve real-world problems in a five-day camp at Thermo Fisher Scientific in Fitchburg.
Most science students are comfortable with theory but may not have as much experience with the technical aspects of science, said Josh Coon, a UW-Madison chemistry professor.
About 20 students from Madison West, Stoughton, DeForest and Evansville high schools spent the beginning of the week learning the basics of chemical engineering with scientists and engineers from UW-Madison and Thermo Fisher.
The $1.2 billion UW credit union stands to pick up a significant number of new student members after it inked a deal that will allow University of Wisconsin students to use their identification cards at the CU’s ATMs.
The deal includes the credit union opening and renting the space for a branch in a new student union building and contributing to the new building’s construction. The new ID/ATM cards will allow students to access university buildings, pay for their meals in their dorm cafeterias, get cash from the ATM and make purchases at point of sale terminals with their personal identification number, according to Lisa Girdharry, UW’s director of marketing.
Douglas Fevens is the first to admit he has little chance of altering the business practices of Internet giant Google.
This isn’t a David vs. Goliath kind of mismatch. Think more gnat vs. oncoming Mack truck.
“I realize I can’t do a whole lot, but I’m not going to just sit here and do nothing, either. I’m going to make my voice heard,” said Fevens.
In particular, Fevens is not a fan of the Google library project, an effort initiated in December 2004 to digitize and index the world’s texts so people can view resources that they generally wouldn’t be able to track down in other ways.
In our current national economic climate, it is critical we use every tool at our disposal, every advantage we have. Our actions today lay the foundation for the economic climate of our region in years to come.
Our region is unique — and fortunate — that visionary leadership from around the region came together proactively during stronger economic times a few years ago to discuss our future. What is our shared regional vision? What are our assets — man-made and natural? How can we collaborate to reach a strong, shared and sustainable future?
Now is the time that we need to come together as a region. We can no longer afford to think of competition on a small scale — city against city or county versus county. Our competition is now national and international, for resources like workers, capital and innovation.
Want to start a business? You don’t have to go far. Entrepreneur magazine lists Madison as one of the Top Ten best places to do it.
Editors called Madison “The Diversifier” for expanding what used to be a three-legged milking stool of state government, the University of Wisconsin and agriculture.
A new study of University of Wisconsin-Madison start-ups shows more than 250 companies have been launched by the school’s faculty, staff and students since 1950.
More than 250 businesses have been founded by UW-Madison faculty, students and staff since 1950, according to a new campus census project.
Project directors Anne Miner and John Surdyk say the list is incomplete and they are seeking suggestions of other firms that have sprung from the university.
Four employees of a consulting firm billed more than $200,000 apiece in five months for work on a University of Wisconsin System information technology project, according to a review by The Associated Press.
Another 10 employees of Chicago-based Huron Consulting Group charged at least $100,000 during that time for services on the project to install a new payroll system, which is behind schedule and over its planning budget.
MENOMONIE, Wis. — A healthy University of Wisconsin System is essential to rebuilding the state’s economy. Yet glaring discrepancies in compensation for the faculty and academic staff who power UW institutions in the state pose a serious threat to our future viability.
MADISON, Wis. — Nitty Gritty owner Marsh Shapiro has sold 400,000 hamburgers and been in business in downtown Madison for 40 years.
So, he said he thinks it’s time to move on, a decision that has prompted him to list his popular restaurant near the University of Wisconsin-Madison campus for sale.
Longtime Madison architect Kenton Peters wrote a column for the State Journal last week lamenting the state Public Service Commission’s decision to allow the American Transmission Co. to run a new towering electrical transmission line along the Beltline.
He criticized the PSC, which is supposed to balance the public good with the interests of the utilities it regulates, for ignoring urban aesthetics in its decision.
….The 345-kilovolt transmission line, for instance, will be squeezed between the Beltline and an array of new buildings that have sprung up along the highway in recent years, not to mention the aesthetic damage to the Arboretum, Odana Golf Course and other scenic venues along the route.
Although state budget details were worked out in secret, it’s no secret many state and University of Wisconsin employees remain boiling mad at Gov. Jim Doyle for ordering 16 unpaid days off over the next two years to help close the $6.6 billion budget gap that keeps on growing.
And while the hit to the pocketbook hurts — especially for those toiling in low-wage jobs — much of the frustration comes from staffers whose pay doesn’t come out of Wisconsin tax coffers.
Quoted: Laura Brown, a senior scientist at the UW Medical School
The incubator would tap into Kenosha’s proximity to such major Chicago-area firms as pharmaceutical maker Abbott Laboratories Inc.; area universities, including University of Wisconsin-Madison and UW-Parkside, and local medical device makers, such as Bradshaw Medical Inc.
MADISON (WKOW) — Your favorite radio station has a dire warning: they might switch to talk radio or shut down completely if Congress passes a new law charging them to play music.
It’s part of a new bill called the Performance Rights Act. Congress would authorize a special agency to collect fees from radio stations to play copyrighted music.
(WSUM general manager Dave Black is quoted)
A large Badger-themed sports bar and full-service restaurant is being planned for University Square, taking a space that has been vacant since the $190 million mixed-use project opened last year.
Scott Acker, who owns Quaker Steak & Lube in Middleton, is teaming with University Square developer Greg Rice on the sports bar, which wouldn’t open until sometime in 2010. A liquor license application has been filed with the city.
The Big Ten Network announced Tuesday that it has signed a deal to be on Cablevision in the New York City area.
Cablevision, the nation’s fifth-largest cable operator with 3.1 million subscribers, will offer BTN in both standard definition and high definition as part of its iO TV Sports Pak.
The troubled U.S. economy hit its first turning point in January, when the stock market began to inch back up, but it will be early 2010 before unemployment eases much, Michael Knetter, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, told a conference on Monday.
Considering the view from the 13th floor’s sun-splashed party deck, you can see why developers of a new apartment tower at North Mills and West Johnson streets had the nerve to dub it “Grand Central.”
“We’re in the dead center of campus,” says John Leja, pointing out landmarks during a tour of the more than $20 million apartment project last week. “There’s the chemistry building and the education building, and there’s where the new Union South will go.”
Scheduled to open in August and with all but a handful of the 155 units rented, Grand Central is the most expensive residential development launched in Dane County in the past two years.
MADISON, Wis. (AP) – The Wisconsin Supreme Court says a developer that claims it lost a major contract for political reasons cannot sue the state for damages.
The court on Wednesday voted 7-0 to dismiss two lawsuits filed by a development group known as Prism, which was chosen for a University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee building project in 2003.
The nation could see a much needed housing recovery sometime in 2010, but unemployment and foreclosure rates will likely worsen between now and then as the economy struggles to get on track, according to experts at a housing conference Thursday at University of Wisconsin-Madison.
“Just try to hang on for another year,” keynote speaker Richard Green told an audience of about 100 bankers, developers, real estate agents and other housing professionals gathered at the Fluno Center.
A new electrical transmission line will be built across Dane County.
The three-member Wisconsin Public Service Commission voted unanimously today to approve a proposal by American Transmission Co. to erect a 345-kilovolt line that will extend from west of Middleton to the countyâ??s eastern edge.
The plan will follow a route along the Beltline and none of it will be built underground.
The Obama administration is dropping hints that a proposed Midwest high-speed rail network connecting Minneapolis, Madison and Chicago has a good chance of landing part of the $8 billion in federal stimulus earmarked for passenger trains.
Quoted: Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE)
The United States is in the midst of its deepest economic downturn since World War II, but unlike the recession of the early 1980s, there is a clear avenue to recovery: technology.
That is the outlook of Michael Knetter, dean of the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, who will be among the featured speakers during a regional business summit Thursday in Wausau.
It will be the end of 2009 before the nation starts to pull out of its recession, and even then, it will take several years for a robust recovery to set in, renowned economist Nouriel Roubini said Monday.
Roubini, named to Time magazineâ??s list of the worldâ??s 100 most influential people and one of the first economists to forecast the current global economic crisis, disagrees with optimists who say the recession should be over this month, followed by rapid economic growth.
Columbus, Wis., native Dr. Mary P. Davis, has been hired as the chief medical officer for Dean Health Plan.
….She is a graduate of Temple University School of Medicine, and completed her residency at UW-Madison. She then practiced in her hometown of Columbus, Wis.
Three Wisconsin natives now run their high-tech firm out of Chicago. But if they win a statewide business plan competition, they will be coming home.
The former University of Wisconsin-Madison classmates have pledged to move Flex Lighting if they beat out 11 other finalists to win the top prize in the 2009 Wisconsin Governor’s Business Plan contest.
“Hopefully, this Wisconsin business plan competition allows us to get back into Wisconsin,” said Mike Casper, Flex’s co-founder and president.
Meriter Hospital, which considered closing its pediatric unit last year because of a drop in hospitalized children, is expanding its pediatric services instead.
The hospital hopes to regain patients it has lost, mostly to UW Hospitalâ??s American Family Childrenâ??s Hospital.
The city of Madison is poised to add another hoop for developers to jump through when considering new projects: how many car trips will be generated.
A resolution working its way through City Hall sets a goal of reducing the total amount of vehicle miles traveled here 25 percent by 2020. That could make it harder to build homes, offices or stores on the urban fringe where cars are the sole means of transportation.
The City Council overwhelmingly passed liquor license suspensions for two downtown bars at its Tuesday night meeting, but not before a heated debate over the policeâ??s role in patrolling licensed establishments in the city.
Madison Avenue, 624 University Ave., and Ram Head Rathskeller, 303 N. Henry St., will have their liquor licenses suspended from July 1 to July 30, in addition to having several restrictions added to their licenses. Johnny Oâ??s, 620 University Ave., will also see several restrictions added to its license.
Want to have a job once you graduate college? You might want to consider majoring in engineering, nursing or teaching.
….Technicians, machinist/machine operators and sales representatives have appeared all four years on the Manpower list, while engineers, drivers and laborers have appeared three out of four years.
In other words, there appear to be some good job options out there for those who don’t have an undergraduate degree from a four-year college.
Madisonâ??s Alcohol License Review Committee is recommending tough discipline for another troubled Downtown bar.
The ALRC on Monday voted 5-2 for a rare 30-day license suspension plus new license conditions for Ram Head Ratskeller, formerly Bull Feathers, 303 N. Henry St. The suspension, which would run July 1 through July 30, and license conditions that would require better technology to detect fake IDs, will be considered by the City Council on Tuesday.
Ram Head, owned by former non-voting ALRC member Richard Lyshek, is one of three campus-area bars to face license non-renewal hearings this spring.
Piece by piece, a framework of research and development resources is being welded into place in the Milwaukee 7 region. The recent flow of news has been decidedly positive at a time when most economic news has been largely negative.
Unlike Madison, where academic research and development at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the main engine, multiple players are bringing intellectual horsepower to bear on revitalizing southeastern Wisconsin. It is the region’s best hope for the future.
It’s going to get ugly out there, folks. No, I’m not talking about gas prices or Beltline traffic. Rather, it’s the looming fight over a shrinking pie.
As much as you wanted to think Wisconsin was going to cruise through this recession unscathed, signs are pointing to a long and painful road ahead. Government officials at the state and local level are now realizing they are going to have to make do with less, lots less.
Quoted: UW-Madison associate professor of business Jim Seward
A nutritious, mouse-eared waffle could win a team of UW-Madison students $2,500.
The student-created snack, called Mickioli, is a finalist in a food product development competition sponsored by Disney and the Institute of Food Technologists Student Association.
A Madison company founded by stem cell pioneer Jamie Thomson has obtained an exclusive license with a New York medical school to turn stem cells into heart cells.
Cellular Dynamics International announced the deal with Mount Sinai School of Medicine on Wednesday.
Edgewood College business ethics professor Denis Collins is relaxing on the front porch of his two-story home on West Lawn Avenue, chuckling over the latest novel from Christopher Buckley.
Along the shady sidewalk, a pair of young mothers walk past pushing baby strollers. Nearby, a male cardinal whistles from a branch of a lilac in full bloom. It’s a classic Madison setting — one seemingly far removed from the world of corporate scandal, Wall Street rip-offs and double-digit unemployment that dominates today’s business headlines.
Fishing isnâ??t an exact science.
But Ben Hobbins, 49, has spent the past few years, with help from the University of Wisconsinâ??s Polymer Research Center, using it to develop an environmentally friendly soft plastic fishing bait.
And the scientific community has taken a liking to the IronClads brand, which was launched last year by Lake Resources Group, Inc.
Editor’s Note: G. Steven Burrill, CEO of Burrill & Company was recently in Madison, Wisconsin to honor the UW-Madison students that competed in the annual G. Steven Burrill Business Plan Competition. WTN News had the opportunity to talk with Burrill about the origins of the contest as well as his thoughts on entrepreneurial opportunities and challenges in Wisconsin in this edited interview.
ESPN is making changes that will boost ESPNU, the giant network told media buyers on Tuesday, Multichannel.com reported.
A report said Wisconsin’s biofuels market must be expanded so Gov. Jim Doyle’s plan to convert a power plant at the University of Wisconsin-Madison will be successful.
In 1931, Madison newspapers reported an ominous sign of the economic gloom that would lower like a fog over Dane County by the middle of the following year: a spike in the number of households evicted on Sept. 1, the city’s traditional “moving day,” for owing back rent.
Three campus-area bars might not have their liquor licenses renewed because of alleged violations, according to papers filed by city officials.
When economists read the statistical tea leaves, seeking signs of an easing recession, they often look for a bottoming of the stock market or an uptick in factory orders.
But the economic picture for thousands of working people across Wisconsin won’t improve until the job picture brightens. And on the jobs front, there’s some good news for Madison, which was just rated No. 1 among medium-sized cities for so-called Next Generation workers. These are younger, tech-savvy people who want “a good job in a great city,” according to Next Generation Consulting, which produced the list.
Quoted: Noel Radomski, director of the Wisconsin Center for the Advancement of Postsecondary Education (WISCAPE)
MADISON, Wis. — Many Madison-area businesses enjoyed heavy traffic over the weekend as thousands of visitors were in the capital city for graduation ceremonies at the University of Wisconsin.
After the approximately 5,000 UW students of the class of 2009 were handed their diploma at the Kohl Center, the graduates â?? and their proud friends and families in attendance â?? looked to celebrate.
Halfway into a five-year, $5 million grant to spur entrepreneurship, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has started a host of programs designed to help get students into business.
The university has used the money to roll out new initiatives, from an arts enterprise club to a specialized dorm community and an event similar to speed dating, only with experienced entrepreneurs, said Charles B. Hoslet, senior special assistant to the chancellor and managing director of UW-Madison’s office of corporate relations.
…despite past state budget rants, I’m not glad to see anyone take a pay cut. But welcome to 2009. You could be one of the thousands who once toiled at General Motors, Consolidated Papers, Harley-Davidson or GE Healthcare. Those jobs are not coming back anytime soon.
Still, with a $6.5 billion state budget hole that keeps on growing, something had to give. At least 15 other states, including once-envied Minnesota, are also furloughing public workers.
Fed up with fights, disturbances and underage drinkers, Madison police had planned to take a new tack with the popular Kollege Klub bar near UW-Madison: Try to block the annual renewal of its liquor license.
But the effort to delicense the bar â?? named by Playboy magazine as one of the best campus party spots in the nation â?? ran aground earlier this week over a communications breakdown among city officials, leaving the cityâ??s Alcohol License Review Committee the option of only imposing modest conditions on the barâ??s liquor license.
U.S. Bank is targeting the UW-Madison campus community with a new full-service office scheduled to open in early summer at 389 East Campus Mall in the University Square building.
Fed up with disturbances, fights and repeated citations for serving underage drinkers, Madison may not renew the liquor license at the popular Kollege Klub bar near UW-Madison.
Founded at 714 State St. in 1953 and moved to its present location at 529 N. Lake St. in 1972, the bar has been ranked by Playboy magazine as one of the best campus party spots in the nation.
Construction projects around campus and the downtown Madison area will cause traffic problems beginning in mid-May and extending through summer, forcing commuters to find alternative routes around campus and the city.
The Wisconsin Union Council announced their support of the new Union Southâ??s final design Wednesday, marking the last vote of endorsement before the contractor bidding process begins this summer.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation and Pfizer, the number one biopharmaceutical corporation in the world, signed a research license this week for the use of human embryonic stem cells.
The Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) will allow Pfizer Inc. to use some of its patented human embryonic stem cell lines for the development of new drug therapies.
WARF, the private, nonprofit patenting and licensing arm of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, announced the signing of the licensing agreement Tuesday. Janet Kelly, a spokesperson for WARF, said financial terms of the deal were confidential.
Pfizer Inc. on Tuesday announced a licensing agreement with the Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, or WARF, for the development of drug therapies using human embryonic stem cells.
The pharmaceutical giant said it would use embryonic stem cells, discovered by UW-Madison researcher James Thomson in 1998, to improve drug safety, screen new drugs and develop cell therapies.
