During home games at Jacobs Field, each batter picks two songs to play when he steps up to home plate.
The musical selections range from country to metal and everything in between. It’s an interesting peek into the players’ lives, because as we all know, music can say a lot about one’s personality.
If you had to pick a song or two that best depicts what this year has meant for your company, what would it be? Wagner’s “Ride of the Valkyries,” the pop song “Who let the dogs out?,” the theme music to “Jaws” or, if it was a good year, Queen’s “We are the champions?”
Perhaps the best soundtrack for the economy recently would be the one used during the shower scene in “Psycho,” with Alan Greenspan as Norman Bates cutting away at the interest rate.
Regardless of your taste in music, the analogy of business leader as conductor rings true — pun intended. Much as a conductor leads and directs the orchestra, a good business leader does the same. And the myriad parts of a company are much like the different melodies, harmonies and beat of a song.
But what happens when someone changes the music on the conductor, like the events on Sept. 11 changed our world? Well, change happens. And it happened to many companies in Northeast Ohio, including some involved in the SBN 2002 Innovation in Business Award.
Such is the case for this year’s three Master Innovators: Denise Fugo of Sammy’s, John Stropki of Lincoln Electric and Anthony Alexander of FirstEnergy. Each knows what it’s like to have to change with the times or tempo of their economic environment.
In the last few years, Fugo closed Sammy’s restaurant to focus on catering, Lincoln Electric morphed its facility from traditional big-batch to just-in-time manufacturing and FirstEnergy grappled with the logistics of deregulation.
The Visionary winners have also faced the music. Dancing to the beat of a different drummer, BrandMuscle developed a new way of coordinating national advertising, Gateway Title found a new customer base in for-sale-by-owner clients and Imperial Home Dcor discovered a new technology and venue for selling its product.
As for the other Visionaries, Athersys and ShoreBank have played to a new rhythm by taking innovative approaches to conducting business, Athersys by bolstering its revenue stream through strategic alliances and ShoreBank by financing institutions normally shunned by other banks.
Winners of this year’s Rising Star awards — FiveStar Technologies, GroundScape Technologies and Viztec Inc. — have learned to play along. Although each is a relative newcomer to the business scene, all three are integrating new technology into existing industries.
It is the ability of these companies to change and play through the changing rhythms of our economy that garners them the recognition and titles of Master, Visionary and Rising Star Innovators.
Distinguished judges
The Innovation in Business Conference wouldn’t be possible without the judges, who pore over the nomination forms and are charged with determining the honorees. This year’s judging panel was comprised of the following business experts:
* Dorothy Baunach, director, NorTech
* Jeffrey Dollinger, director of development, Inventure Place/Inventors Hall of Fame
* Stephen Ellis, partner, Arter & Hadden
* Michael Marzec, COO, Smart Business Network Inc.
* Connie Swenson, editor, SBN Akron/Canton
