Innovation + Job News

With Lab Hub, Blue Bell's Halfpenny Technologies hopes to take Health Information Exchange technology to the next level, integrating features like computerized order entry and results reporting with the company's already-respected exchange tools. With a little help from their friends, Halfpenny may be ready to deliver this turnkey technology sooner than expected as the company announced two big steps forward last week.

First came a $2.6 million venture capital investment. Locals like Bala Cynwyd-based Osage Venture Partners and LORE (Loosely Organized Retired Executives) Associates partnered with New York-based Milestone Venture Partners to put support behind Lab Hub. Investors believe the financing will help push Lab Hub over the finish line.

"Halfpenny's strong technology platform, domain expertise and solid business strategy combined with its growing client base have positioned the company to move to the next level, says Osage Venture Partners vice president David Drahms. "We look forward to partnering with Halfpenny in meeting the needs of the evolving healthcare market."

Halfpenny also announced the addition of four industry veterans to the Halfpenny Management Team. New team members include , executive vice president of business development Mitch Fry; chief financial officer Daniel O'Brien; senior vice president of sales Roger Newbury; and vice president of sales Jim Sheils. While trying to establish Lab Hub in new markets, Halfpenny officials hope these experienced team members can keep things growing.

"All of our new team members have impressive track records in healthcare and understand the complex challenges facing the industry today," says Halfpenny chief sales officer Bob Cox. "We are pleased to be able to draw upon the strategic vision and in-depth understanding of these healthcare veterans and look forward to their insights and ideas as we continue to develop solutions that address ever-expanding laboratory outreach, HIE and REC initiatives."

Source: Bob Cox, Halfpenny Technologies
Writer: John Steele

It's the curse of the middle child: your older sister's worn out jean jacket that went out of style two years before she bought it is now the only thing you have for the first day of school. Hand-me-downs can make your closet look like the wardrobe trailer for a John Hughes movie. But a new service from Penn's Wharton School of Business ensures that your kids won't suffer like you did.

It's called Drop Swop, a children's clothing trade-in service that allows parents to trade in their child's unwanted or outgrown clothes for points that can be put toward a growing online collection of gently used clothing cast-offs. A simple concept could have only come from experience and founder Marcus Hathaway says his inspiration came a little over a year ago after moving from California to attend Wharton.

"At that time, my son was growing, going through his clothes so we had piles of clothes that we just ended up storing in his room," says Hathaway. "We kept buying more clothes and storing clothes and he didn't even have a chance to wear most of the stuff."

Like the clothes that have become its specialty, rapid growth caused Drop Swop to outgrow its original location at the University of Pennsylvania. Today, parents can find Drop Swop bins at Turning Points for Children in Center City and at the Caring People Alliance at the West Philadelphia Community Center as well as Penn's Family Resource Center in University City. As the word spreads, Hathaway hopes to add more facilities and staff to fill them in the coming year.

"When we talked to our friends and members of our family, we recognized that ours was a shared experience," says Hathaway. "Drop Swop was a way to interact and help parents get the most out of their kids' clothes."

Source: Marcus Hathaway, Drop Swop
Writer: John Steele

When most people strap on a helmet and hit the road on a bike, they are probably not thinking about carbon tonnage or sustainable energy credits. But with each pedal push, cyclists are putting a dent in Philadelphia's carbon footprint. And University City bike sharing consultants CityRyde want you to know how much your morning ride is effecting the planet.

Creating a personalized version of the carbon metering software they have in city-wide bike sharing programs from Paris to Portland, CityRyde introduced a new mobile application this week helping bikers and walkers monitor their carbon savings and see how much their car is polluting.  The company is beta testing on Android phones with hopes to expand to Blackberry and iPhone in the next month and is working on adding public transit to the application.

Twenty-five percent of the world's carbon emissions come from daily transportation.

"Knowledge is really power," says CityRyde CEO Tim Ericson. "I don't think anyone really understands the impact of their daily activities."

Through corporate partnerships, Ericson and his team hope to offer incentives for people to reduce their carbon emissions. Using increasingly comprehensive mapping software, CityRyde can examine a user's location, route and rate of speed to determine what mode of transportation a rider is using to keep things honest, holding sustainable to a higher standard and making it worth your while in the process.

"A perfect example would be (all-natural foods maker) Cliff Bar or one of those type of companies offering product samples or other incentives in exchange for those carbon credits, essentially giving them a marketing piece and a PR piece combined into one package," says Ericson.

Source: Tim Ericson, CityRyde
Writer: John Steele 

Who didn't love art class as a kid? Painting, drawing, playing with clay; it was almost like a second recess. A group of artists and education reformers hope to remind the Fishtown community both young and old of the joys of arts education this week as they host Community Arts Fest, a series of hands-on art projects and booths featured at the Crane Arts Building this Sunday. Community Arts Fest  (CAFe) will give the varied artistic leaders of Philadelphia the chance to introduce themselves to one of the city's most creative neighborhoods.

"We're all collectively working together to promote what's available to families because all of these arts groups are fighting over the same little bit of money," says Rachel Zimmerman, Executive Director of visual arts group and CAFe presenter InLiquid. "Hopefully, by expanding awareness, we will get more people involved. There is a ton of stuff happening in Philadelphia geared toward arts education but few people know what's happening."

Along with introducing Fishtown to some fine arts education interests, CAFe will serve as a fundraiser for local youth programs at The Cruz Recreation Center and the new ArtsRising "ArtsZones", which are now being established as hubs of arts and cultural activities for students and their families throughout the Philadelphia area. Collected donations will strengthen existing after-school programs and fund new ones.

"It's not so much an exhibition so much as each group will be leading an activity," says Zimmerman. "The idea is to engage kids but also to engage adults to get them invested in what is happening in the community at large."

Source: Rachel Zimmerman, InLiquid
Writer: John Steele

After seeing the film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, millions dreamed of a day when everlasting gobstoppers would hit candy store shelves, oompa loompas could manage household errands and edible wallpaper would make the snozberries taste like snozberries. Only one true Wonka-esque innovator made it happen.

Entrepreneur Adnan Aziz dreamed of a marker that could draw edible taste strips onto paper, like the wallpaper in one of his favorite movies. With a little seed capital from Penn's Wharton Investment Management Fund and guidance from business partner and current CEO Jay Minkoff, Aziz founded First Flavor, a Bala Cynwyd-based food marketing company specializing in dissolving taste-test strips that allow consumers to taste new beverage and product flavors before they buy. It's a concept that has added a new dimension to the way companies market new brands.

"It's all about empowering the consumer," says Minkoff. "Before you bought your car, you took it for a test drive, before you buy a suit you try it on. It's funny that you walk down the aisle of the supermarket with all these new products and flavors and rarely given the opportunity to try them before buying."

Recently, First Flavor received early-stage financing from Ben Franklin Technology Partners in the amount of $100,000. When Aziz first introduced First Flavor, he thought of the greeting card industry. With a birthday card, he thought, why not offer a piece of cake. With new financing, increased brand presence and a partnership with American Greetings, First Flavor brings Tasties, a new line of flavorful greeting cards, to market this fall.

"Consumer products use us as a promotional marketing vehicle to launch new products and in 2009 and the first half of 2010, most national companies were not launching products," says Minkoff. "This should create more recurring revenue for us."

Source: Jay Minkoff, First Flavor
Writer: John Steele

As anyone who has ever tried to buy a car in Philadelphia knows, dealers are closed on Sundays. The same puritanical blue laws that used to restrict alcohol sales still prohibit car dealerships, to the chagrin of salesmen and shoppers alike. Wayne's mobile application firm Advanced Mobile Solutions provides a solution to shopping restrictions like blue laws, allowing car shoppers and home shoppers to access dealer information right from their smartphones with a simple text-message code. Launching brands like Cars2Go, Homes2Go and Classifieds2Go, AMS hopes to modernize digital listings markets made famous by sites like Craigslist many years ago.

"The difference between us and (Craigslist) is that we take data that is already out there and make it mobile ready, whereas they only have data that has been edited and listed by another person," says AMS Marketing Director Dan Curry. "We take, for example a builder that has 80,000 homes nationwide. That is something that is impossible for them to go in and list in that way. With us, they can do anything on the phone that they would be able to do anywhere else."

Since its founding in 2006, AMS has shown marked growth, finding partnerships with clients like Apartments.com and Builder Homesite. Recently, the company has eyed further expansion, bringing new features to their iPhone applications and adding compatibility with the Android market. This summer the company received financing from Ben Franklin Technology Partners to expand its staff by four and prepare to increase sales and features for 2011.

"We want to go a little heavier on updating the whole platform and adding new features every month from here on out," says Curry. "The product has been proven, tested and now we are just going to go into further making this product something that no one can really touch.

Source: Dan Curry, AMS
Writer: John Steele

Albert Einstein once said that mystery "is the source of all true art and all science. He who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead." When Pearl Schaeffer and Raye Cohen first partnered with the School District of Philadelphia four years ago, there was no mystery about the city's education system: it was in trouble. 80,000 students skipped over a week of school, and 46 percent dropped out. Schaeffer and Cohen knew something had to be done to make students stand in rapt awe once more.

After creating the Philadelphia Arts in Education Partnership in 1996, the pair successfully petitioned for a U.S. Department of Education grant 10 years later to prove that art could be used across disciplines like science and math to engage under-performing students. This week, the group announces a $1.1 million grant to expand the program, providing regular employment to 50 area artists trained as teachers, bringing the right kind of mystery back to math and science.

"If students are having difficulty in reading, understanding sequencing of events in a story," says PAEP Education Director Raye Cohen,  "there would be an art project that would be discretely based on the idea of understanding the sequence as you go through that art project and the teacher and the artist would then reinforce that this is the same skill set as reading a story."

Building on its 2006 Arts Bridges report, PAEP has created Arts Link: Building Mathematics and Science Competencies through an Arts Integrated Model. With this 4-year grant, the group will not only educate teachers and artists in its new model but will honor state standards in mathematics, science, and reading skills for students in grades 2 through 5.

"The Arts are a means of allowing students to learn in multiple ways," says PAEP CEO Pearl Schaeffer. "When you allow arts to overlay a science project or a math project, students tend to learn better and retain information better. That's what we've been seeing and we are now going to test it out to get some hard data."

Source: Pearl Schaeffer and Raye Cohen, PAEP
Writer: John Steele

Where can an interested Philadelphian go to see some of the most cleverly designed buildings in the world? According to the Society of American Registered Architects, the search could take you from China to Chestnut Street as the group honors various design achievements both local and abroad. But you might be better off seeing them all at once as its annual conference, like many of its award recipients, is being held right here in Philadelphia.

"This is a juried awards program so they are looking for something beyond the norm, they're looking for innovation, they're looking for cutting edge design," says organizer and jury chairman John Di Benedetto, who operates his own firm in Jenkintown. "And this year, many of the projects that received awards incorporated a sustainable design feature."

Hosted at the Society Hill Sheraton, the SARA conference boasts a litany of architectural events from a city tour of significant architectural projects to a President's Award Celebration Dinner featuring the Mummers and honoring International Award Winners Denise Scott Brown, Robert Venturi, and the late Louis Kahn of famous Manayunk firm Venturi, Scott Brown. The Philadelphia Jewish History Museum's renovation will also be honored.

"The current challenges in the profession are related to the economy so from a business standpoint, the society tries to serve it's members by seminars and education in terms of how to maintain a practice in a down economy," says Di Benedetto. "From a design standpoint, the current trend is for sustainable design and the society goes out of its way to create a venue for information and education in those areas. Like many other professional organizations, this is a venue to encourage advancements in the profession and in individual practices."

Source: John Di Benedetto, Society of American Registered Architects, Philadelphia Chapter
Writer: John Steele

Farmers across Central Pennsylvania will be celebrating another plentiful harvest season this fall, but thanks to Weavers Way and the Awbury Arboretum, there will also be plenty of celebrating to do in the city. The Weavers Way Community Farm, a Northwest Philadelphia urban farm tended by high school students and used to make local products by community members,  is honoring another successful year. The Weavers Way farm celebrates this Saturday from 11am-3pm at Awbury Arboretum with the second annual Northwest FarmFest, a country festival for Philadelphia's city farmers.

"This farm is making sustainable agriculture a part of this urban community," says farm committee member Josh Brooks. "This is a time to gain acknowledgment for the farm, spread awareness and just celebrate that it's there. And have fun."

As the Weavers Way urban farm offers students and community members all the benefits of local agriculture--fresh produce, low prices, local cultivation--the Chestnut Hill food co-op's members and community program directors bring all the country comforts of a small-town festival to the big city. The Northwest FarmFest is free and open to the public, presenting musical performances from local acts, pumpkin painting, hay rides, and farm tours. And of course, the Weavers Way Farmstand will have plenty of homegrown produce on sale, along with prepared food from the Weavers Way's Marketplace Program, a school-based cooperative food business run by students. Weavers Way hopes the event will be a venue to show off many school programs focused on the benefits and lessons of local, healthy eating. And of course, to celebrate the harvest.

"We will also be promoting the whole aspect of Weavers Way Community Programs who work with schools to create a marketplace, teaching about food and creating a market" says Brooks. "We'll have food, some barbecue, the marketplace will be selling some food and drink."

Source: Josh Brooks, Weavers Way Farm
Writer: John Steele

Just blocks from one of the premier art museums in the world lies North Philadelphia's Fairmount neighborhood. But once a year, Fairmount is more than just Art Museum-adjacent, bringing all the neighborhood's best artists out of the woodwork and into the frame for the Fairmount Arts Crawl. Started seven years ago by neighborhood art activists, the Fairmount Arts Crawl brings local artists and their works to various neighborhood businesses and meeting places every spring. With the event just six months away, Fairmount CDC officials, who have since been handed control of the event, begin preparations this week, issuing a request for proposals to any and all local artists interested in a neighborhood exhibition.

"This year, we are really trying to cast our net wider this year," says Fairmount CDC Executive Director Rebecca Johnson. "We hope this will give artists another venue, another avenue to expose their artwork to the public."

For the local homeowners in the neighborhood, CDC officials have created a poster contest to bring in revenue and create a seminal event poster to capture a quintessential event in their community. CDC officials hope the poster will be a key advertising feature, a great souvenir and a way to raise revenue. Interested artists should send work here.

"This artist from the community created a famous 'Doors of Fairmount' poster three years ago and people are still really interested," says Johnson. "People who live in the neighborhood want to have a piece of art that reflects their neighborhood so we wanted to create an official arts crawl poster as a keepsake."

Source: Rebecca Johnson, Fairmount CDC
Writer: John Steele

Something is wrong down under. Infection rates at Australian hospitals have increased over the last few years, causing patients and medical professionals to call for hospitals to come clean with infection statistics. Wayne's Molecular Detection Inc. hopes to lend a hand as they announced that the product rollout for its Detect-Ready MRSA diagnosis platform would head to Australia this week, marking the start of a global sales strategy targeting the Asia-Pacific Corridor, parts of Europe and the United States. This strategy targets countries in need of infection prevention abroad before returning to the U.S. to set up a local base.

"(Australians) have the same problems in hospitals that we have here in the states," says MDI CEO Todd Wallach. "Patients are contracting MRSA and other bacterial infections in hospitals after a successful surgery or procedure. Many hospitals have to start implementing infection control procedures that identify patients at risk and force these hospitals to really look at how they take care of a patient from entry level to exit."

Aiding in MDI's transition into the Australian market is Sydney's Integrated Sciences, a medical products and research company that, through a newly minted partnership with MDI, will aid Detect-Ready sales reps in chasing down leads and understanding the needs of the Aussie medical community.

"Our strategy has been very consistent around the world by identifying what we perceive as being the best-in-class, best-in-breed molecular diagnostic distributors," says Wallach. "They become our right-hand-man in the field. We work with them closely to ensure we get the right information conveyed but they bring the right skill set to be able to market a technically advanced product."

Source: Todd Wallach, MDI
Writer: John Steele

It's one of life's great mysteries: you can travel to a thousand cities and eat at a hundred fancy restaurants and drink a dozen craft beers at each of the bars along the way. But a meal never tastes as good as one at your favorite neighborhood haunt. And according to Philadelphia's sustainability leaders, this phenomenon is not just good for your appetite, it can be good for your neighborhood and your city as well.

Based on a concept created by the William Penn Foundation, partners from the Sustainable Business Network, Azavea and NPower created Common Space, a new mapping platform that creates a network of neighborhood establishments within a certain walkable, bikeable or busable distance to help residents support local business.

"The really cool thing is, I can map my friend's common space as well as my own," says SBN Executive Director Leanne Krueger-Braneky. "So if I am leaving from my office in Center City and meeting my husband who is coming from our house in West Philadelphia, he could say he is going to bike for 15 minutes and I could say I was going to walk for 20 minutes and Common Space will map the area where we would be able to meet up and map local culture events and businesses in that field."

Partnering with tastemakers like UWISHUNU and Yelp, Common Space shows you the best spots in your transit area, allowing you the most sustainable way possible to hit your next favorite haunt. After their trial run, organizers hope to partner with citywide festivals and cultural events like LiveArts and Philly Beer Week.

"Sustainability was one of the values William Penn outlined, which is why they wanted to partner with us," Krueger-Braneky says. "Because the application does encourage walking, biking, and public transit, it's a way of showing what's going on in the city while encouraging alternative transit."

Source: Leanne Krueger-Braneky, SBN
Writer: John Steele

Restaurant Week returned to Center City this week, bringing $35 prix fixe menus to downtown's hottest restaurants. Well, at least the hottest restaurants within a 20-block radius of City Hall. But for the restaurants that don't claim a Center City zip code, there's Philly's Neighborhood Food Week, an outlier's answer to Restaurant Week, offering access to some of the best food in town, just a bit out of town.

Neighborhood Food Week is the brainchild of Charisse McGilll, veteran event planner with Philadelphia conference organizers Ardent Management. As the economy slowed last year, so did the conference game, and McGill began hearing from restaurants looking to compete with Restaurant Week.

"This event will bring exposure to neighborhoods that have been overlooked as dining destinations," says McGill. "At first, we heard from restaurants near Penn's Landing and Roxborough, and we looked into doing events in each of those neighborhoods. But we thought it might not have the impact we wanted. So we included all the neighborhoods outlying Philadelphia to see how far we could get."

The Second Annual restaurant week has added new neighborhoods, new restaurants and new tastes, all of which will be on display when Neighborhood Food Week kicks off October 10. With many prix fixe menus coming in cheaper than Restaurant Week, Neighborhood Food Week participants can sample fare from City Avenue, Ogontz Avenue or East Passyunk. They will try tapas in NoLibs or Thai food in Manayunk or Italian food in Darby. Expanding horizons never tasted so good.

"Last year, we had five neighborhoods participating and, with the success of last year, we have nine neighborhoods participating this year," says McGill. "I am excited to return to Blue Bananas on South Street for their four course menu for $30. Also Mango Moon, a Thai restaurant in Manayunk is doing three courses for $20. I shop by price so I am looking forward to the event myself."

Source: Charisse McGill, Ardent Management
Writer: John Steele

This week, Center City District CEO Paul Levy acquired the Holy Grail of city planning; a detailed set of data collected by the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau. The data may not provide eternal life for city developers but it will make life a whole lot sweeter.

After years of educated guessing to determine demographic breakdowns of Philadelphia's downtown, this data set has pinned down where the 267,331 Philly workers (as of 2008) make their living and hang their hats. Previously only having county data to work with, 48 states participated in a federal program to determine demographic data for cities. CCD published Philadelphia's Major Employment Nodes: Where City Residents Work, a 12-page report outlining where we work and where that may soon take us.

"This is the Holy Grail we have been searching for for 20 years because all this time we have been estimating how many people work downtown," says Levy. "A retailer wants to make a decision on where to locate? We know exactly how much money residents earn, how many work here. This is a huge tool for economic development."

One of the key myths busted by this wealth of new information is the idea that suburbanites hold most of the jobs in Center City. In fact,
Philadelphia residents hold 51 percent of Center City's private-sector jobs. And many city-dwellers, the report states, commute to outlying corporate hubs for work, which Levy says may drive transportation policy in the future.

"We know now that 15 percent of the jobs in the King of Prussia area are held by Philadelphia residents," says Levy. "So that starts to have huge implications for transit planning. In this report we can clearly show the importance of the downtown and how many people would benefit from improvements to transit."

Source: Paul Levy, Center City District
Writer: John Steele

From the LOVE statue to the Mural Arts Program to Market Street's massive Clothespin, Philadelphia has its share of big, urban art projects. But there is more to creating the next big movement in urban arts than making the largest painting or sculpture. So the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation launched the Knight Arts Challenge, a search looking for urban projects to change the artistic landscape of American cities for the better. Started in Miami, Knight Arts brings it's challenge to Philadelphia this fall.

"We are coming to Philadelphia and it would be presumptuous of us to say that we know just what you need in the arts," says Knight Arts VP Dennis Scholl. "So instead of saying that, we're saying we don't know what Philadelphia's next art idea is and we need you to tell us. It's not about large institutions only getting grants, people who have been in the arts forever only getting grants. It's open to everybody in the community."

After three successful years in Miami, the Knight Arts Challenge has spawned poetry collectives and arts education centers and jazz festivals. Philadelphia's challenge, a three-year, $9 million initiative, will provide new funding for established arts institutions, independent artists, businesses, service organizations and anyone else with a great idea and a plan to execute it. The challenge kicks off October 5 with a cocktail reception, where interested artists can find out how they can contribute to Philadelphia's artistic future.

"Philadelphia has two important things going for it: it has incredible, world-class cultural assets," says Scholl. "But in addition to that, Philadelphia has an incredibly hot, steadily rising art scene, with collectives and up-and-coming performance arts groups. And that is really why we were drawn to Philadelphia, because it's kinda happening, frankly."

Source: Dennis Scholl, Knight Arts
Writer: John Steele