Northeast Ohio's Signature Technologies
Northeast Ohio’s technology sectors build upon the region’s strengths to drive the economy of the future. Some of these strengths are from Northeast Ohio’s manufacturing, industrial and innovation heritage. Others are driven by our need to move forward - beyond our roots - and yet maintain our culture of innovation with new technologies.
JumpStart TechLift Advisors’ collaboration with The Third Frontier Project, Ohio’s largest ever commitment to expanding the state’s high-tech research, innovation commercialization and company formation, has helped Northeast Ohio excel in these five technology sectors:
Northeast Ohio’s strong industrial heritage makes it the top area in the world for Advanced Materials.
Ohio is the number one state in the U.S. in polymers, measured by employment and business activity. In fact, if it were a state, Northeast Ohio would rank number eight on its own. The University of Akron is ranked second in polymers for U.S. universities and Case Western is ranked fifth.
Northeast Ohio has a very strong position in metals, metalworking and metallurgy. ASM, the Materials Society (formerly the American Society for Metals) has its worldwide headquarters here and a large number of metalworking companies call Northeast Ohio home. Steel was a major driver in Northeast Ohio’s development in the 20th century. Today, the region owes some of its prominence with specialty steels from manufacturers like Mittal, Timken and RTI Industries.
Northeast Ohio is known for our cluster of paint, coatings and lubricants companies.
Northeast Ohio’s advanced materials companies include Lubrizol, RPM, PolyOne, Goodyear, BF Goodrich, Graftek, Sherwin Williams, ICI Paints, and many others.
Our strength in materials has led to leadership in the newest area of materials technology development, nanotechnology. Ohio’s Nano-Network, a NorTech initiative, has raised Ohio’s profile in nanotechnology, leading to the state's ranking in Small Times magazine’s “Top Ten States for Nanotechnology” the past three years. In 2005, the Third Frontier funded the Center for Multifunctional Polymer Nano Devices (CMPND), a research center to encourage leading edge research and commercialization.
Increased understanding and the ability to measure the properties of materials at the nano scale adds to Northeast Ohio’s opportunities. Advanced Materials is at the core of many interesting collaborative pursuits including new materials for fuel cells, flexible electronic displays, and nano-applications in medicine and electronics.
BioSciences and Healthcare in Northeast Ohio is largely driven by The Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals, Case Western Reserve University, Summa Health, and the broad medical industry presence of more than 450 companies including Philips Medical, Steris Corporation, Invacare, OneSource, MemberHealth and Athersys. The Cleveland Clinic is consistently rated as a top five hospital in the U.S. and number one in cardiac care by U.S. News and World Report. Case Western Reserve’s biomedical engineering department is rated as one of the top five in the U.S. as well. Northeast Ohio is building on this tremendous strength by vying to be one of the nation’s pre-eminent centers for biomedical technology.
Leading the charge for Northeast Ohio in BioSciences is a close JumpStart TechLift Advisors partner, BioEnterprise. This unique organization, formed in 2002, has created, recruited, and accelerated more than 60 BioScience companies and has helped these companies attract more than $515 million in new funding. They have also coordinated over 160 technology transfer deals with industry partners.
JumpStart has done its part to fund and support BioSciences companies, with investments in eight biosciences companies.
Third Frontier Investments from the State of Ohio, in neurostimulation, stem cells and regenerative medicine, medical imaging, GI colon cancer detection, macular degeneration, tissue engineering, atrial fibrillation, nano-medicine and others have helped establish Northeast Ohio as a research center and has fueled opportunities for future entrepreneurial enterprises.
Northeast Ohio has a credible electronics cluster and particular strengths in sensors, MEMS, instrumentation and control systems. This “instruments and controls” focus is key to Northeast Ohio’s leadership in industrial automation and a link to our manufacturing heritage.
In 2007, the state of Ohio Third Frontier Program made significant investments in our electronics industry future by investing over $70 million toward electronics-related research entities across the state. This included the Wright Center for Sensor systems Engineering (WCSSE), a center led by Cleveland State University, Case Western Reserve University and the University of Akron, focused on the systems that electronic sensors must work within and interact with in order to produce useful, accurate and consistent results. WCSSE will collaborate with IDCAST, a fundamental sensor technology center in Dayton, to make Ohio a premier center for sensor technology.
In addition to Instruments and Controls, Northeast Ohio is home to a growing and world-recognized cluster in liquid crystal display technologies, anchored by the Liquid Crystal Institute at Kent State University. This cluster has already spawned a number of new entrepreneurial companies like Alpha Micron and Kent Displays. NorTech has created FlexMatters, a unique collaborative to make Northeast Ohio the Center for manufacturing the next generation of liquid crystals on flexible polymers.
Northeast Ohio’s electronics cluster also includes companies in computer technology, communications, power, electronic manufacturing services and electronic materials such as Rockwell Automation, Parker Hannifin, Keithley Instruments, Phillips Medical, General Electric, Nordson, Diebold, Bird Electronics and many others.
Information and Communication Technologies has been at the heart of the world’s technology revolution for the past 30 years, and entrepreneurial companies have driven it. Household names like Microsoft, Oracle, Apple did not even exist before the PC/Internet revolution. By far, IT is the number one area for venture capital investments over the past 20 years, and any region that hopes to be thought of as “high tech” needs to have strong representation in the software, internet and communications sectors.
Northeast Ohio competes with every other region in the United States in this software and internet boom. Hyland Software, for example, began in Westlake, OH and recently received an investment of $265 million, valuing the company at nearly $500 million. Other Northeast Ohio software powerhouses include Brulant Software, Brand Muscle, PreEmptive Solutions and many others. In the internet space, Northeast Ohio played early with Telxon and others, and continued with the incubation of Insurance.com.
True to its manufacturing roots, Northeast Ohio is home to many logistics, supply chain and distribution management solutions companies, including, GE Penske Logistics, Banyan Technology and others.
The availability of unique communications infrastructure (miles of unlit broadband fiber) in Northeast Ohio due to our location in the country, has also allowed the region to create a national model for digital infrastructure initiatives. Northeast Ohio’s OneCommunity network has received numerous awards for its innovative approach to connecting, enabling and transforming our region.
Our nation’s energy crisis has fueled a great deal of activity in Advanced Energy solutions across the U.S and in Northeast Ohio.
The State of Ohio’s Third Frontier Program has made significant investments in fuel cell technology via the Wright Fuel Cell Group. Efforts between that group and the Ohio Fuel Cell Coalition makes Ohio among the top five states in the nation in fuel cell research and commercialization, with clusters of entrepreneurial companies springing up in Northeast Ohio. Fuel cell technology represents an intersection of Advanced Energy, Advanced Materials and Electronics, drawing strength from our large industrial base of polymers, instrumentation, and controls and manufacturing.
Northeast Ohio is considering many alternatives to participate in the growth of wind power, solar photovoltaic and solar thermal, geothermal, and other advanced energy solutions. Organizations like the Great Lakes Energy Development Task Force, EcoCityCleveland and the Cleveland Green Building Coalition are helping lead these efforts.
The combination of Ohio’s agricultural, chemical and industrial heritage has created new opportunities in biofuels, biomass solutions renewable specialty chemicals, and renewable polymers/plastics, centered through the Third Frontier funded Ohio BioProducts Innovation Center at the Ohio Agricultural Research and Development Center in Wooster.