Repurposing continued ...Earth Stone Products

3/26/2011 Post script updated:  http://www.digtriad.com/news/story.aspx?storyid=138603 has nice video on "Made In The Triad: Earth Stone Products"

In my February 11 Blog, I discussed Re-purposing Buildings, at the end I mentioned Earth Stone Products. I had an opportunity to visit their facility and get a first hand view of how they were taking waste land field materials and re-purposing them to elegant materials for use inside and outside.

This facility gives me an opportunity to discuss one of the M21C metaphors that views the 3 dimensional concept of producing products.

This cartoon illustrates the concept of a three dimensional product example. In the "Y" dimension there are several different components that can be modified or combined in the "X" dimension into various products for the "Z" dimension. For Earth Stone Products the "Y" is waste land field materials, specifically discarded granite counter tops. The "Z" is the products that are produced at their facility in Greensboro, NC. Within the Earth Stone facility there are equipment that process the discarded materials into a wide variety of pattern shapes as shown on their website.

The photo essay shows their facility and equipment which is performing the functions of "X" by using presses and dies that take the various shapes from discarded materials and producing various pattern shapes depending on the die used.

Looking at the photo essay the top row shows the entrance sign, shipping and receiving area and interior staging area. Row 2 shows the operator placing a material discard onto the press and the resulting stamped curved product. On the third row is the conveyer belt sending the cut products into a machine that uses steel shot to perform the abrasive processing, the last image shows the metal shot that the machine uses. From this photo essay you have a real live example of the "X" that was illustrated above in the cartoon.

It was interesting to also see how they were re-purposing liquid containers as containers for shipment of the processed products; the top of the container and structural members were removed to allow open access to the container. It is my understanding that this is a safer way to ship the heavy products instead of shrink wrap.

Another aspect of the "X" processing is the Intelligent Property where the process has world wide patent protection (pending).

Hopefully this will add insight into the concepts of Metaphors for 21st Century, new ways of thinking inside and outside the box.

Thanks to Rosemarie Williams, Owner Earth Stone Products and John Tesh for the excellent tour and agreement to use their company as an example of how M21C "X,Y,Z" metaphor applies.

Repurposing Buildings ….

This week I had the opportunity to tour a repurposed building here in Greensboro; the Revolution Mill Studios. The developer, James Peeples, has a vision of a historic district with several abandoned cotton mill buildings reclaimed and refurbished into first class business and residential buildings.

At the west end of the building is an events center, which is visualized in the photo essay at right.

To give a comparison of what the building looked like before just look at the adjoining buildings which have not received any conversion.

The first contact I had with this venture was back in the late 1980’s when Gary Dent came into a GTCC class with a large thick notebook with a plan to convert one of the old Cone cotton mills into an entrepreneur center. The entrepreneur center at that time was in an old bank building in downtown Greensboro. My initial visit to that center was in the vault which had been converted into a conference room. At that time I had not been exposed to the term repurposed buildings, but that surely was an example of using something designed for one purpose now being used for another purpose; a vault designed for money now for being used as conference room.

If you visit the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship you find a building that was once abandoned but, now thriving with all types of businesses. There are now over 60 associates in the building with over 100 graduates (businesses that have moved to other locations). This highly successful incubator is a prime example of people that thought outside the box and started their own businesses.

Next to the Nussbaum Center in an adjacent part of the mill building is the Revolution Mill Studios that are being converted into new homes for businesses, some of which have moved from the Entrepreneur Center next door. On their website you can see how far they have come and the quality of the conversion. You can also find history of the facility at their website. A total of 250,000 of the 600,000 square feet of the mill has been renovated and is occupied by 97 businesses. Projections are that as many as 1,000 to 1,500 will work at Revolution Mill when the rehabilitation is complete.

Repurposing buildings is a good example of paradigm shift, moving from the old to the new. As David Murdock notes in his adage “To do the Impossible, you have to see the Invisible.” In a book on paradigm shifts, I recall the author pointing out ‘An Administrator gets everything he can out of the paradigm within which he is operating (looking inside the box); a Visionary sees something that is not in the paradigm (looking outside the box); but a Leader is one that can move from one paradigm to another paradigm. It seems to me the developer of repurposed buildings would be a Leader in this context. Of course for this to happen, there must be appropriate resources to accomplish the various tasks required to transition from an existing paradigm to the new paradigm.

Hopefully this brief blog on repurposing buildings will give you some more ideas on thinking inside and outside the box.

Post Script: This site http://www.earthstoneproducts.net/wp/ takes waste landfield materials and repurposes them to elegant materials for use inside and outside.

NC Research Parks .... New Backbone

North Carolina demonstrates a state that is thinking outside the box with the network of Research Parks developed starting in 1959 with the Research Triangle Park in the Raleigh-Durham area. 

Information about North Carolina Research Parks are identified here.  These will leverage the unique characteristics of the individual parks that have been established in the state and highlights the diverse strengths of the state’s knowledge resources.

The North Carolina Research Parks Network’s mission is "To enhance the state of North Carolina’s global competitive position through a network of science and technology parks focused on collaborative efforts and technology-based economic development.”

In my December 2, 2008 blog “Seeing the Invisible ….” I discuss the NC Research Campus at Kannapolis, NC and include links to speeches during the November 20, 2008 Dedication.

These various research parks have emerged over a fifty year span. Stretching from Charlotte to Raleigh, they form a backbone of advanced research and development vertebrae along the I85-I40 corridor.

Expanding scope of the chart of Business Engine discussed in the previous blog “Seeing the Invisible ….”; we see NC has now put in place a research and development structure that should mesh nicely with the next phases of Production/Service and Marketplace. By creating the network of parks it should bring focus to the Business part of the engine. Advanced Manufacturing Initiatives marry well with this network of parks and will be the channel through which research products can be effectively taken to the marketplace. Also, by FedEx placing their international logistics hub in the middle of the backbone, NC is poised to be an international powerhouse of the future, if implemented appropriately.

I am encouraged to see the developments being taken by NC are congruent with my Metaphors for 21st Century (M21C) thinking and validates the concepts discussed in this blog and my companion website http://www.bcswonline.com/. The Five Team Innovative Engine chart also applies nicely to this thinking.

The five hats of Scientist, Engineer, Technologist, Customer and Business are key skills of the workforce that is required for the 21st Century Economy. There are other important skills such as Global Supply Chain Management as depicted in the “Global Value Streams ….21st Century Skills” blog of April 18, 2008.

Here’s hoping that North Carolina will continue to think outside and inside the box by utilizing the best practices of an innovative engine; it appears to me these are compatible with of M21C concepts.

Seeing the Invisible ….

During the NC Research Campus Dedication in Kannapolis, NC on November 20, 2008, David Murdock gave a speech where he referenced an adage “To do the Impossible you have to see the Invisible.” His remarks are an excellent example of out of the box thinking. He references the time when the textile mill was demolished and a vision emerged of a research campus rising in its place. At that time people thought the idea was crazy talk as described by Erskine Bowles in his speech. At the time of the dedication there were three magnificent buildings which had replaced the rubble of the previous mill. See images of these three buildings in NC Research Campus Dedication Power Point Presentation. The speeches can be accessed from slide 4 of the presentation. I highly recommend anyone reading this blog take time to listen to his speech and two others which have been posted on YouTube.

· David Murdock Owner and Chairman Dole Food Company and Castle & Cooke, Inc.
· Erskine B Bowles President University of North Carolina
· Dr. Victor J Dzau, MD Chancellor for Health Affairs, Duke University President & CEO, Duke University Health System

As emphasized in the NC Research Campus website:
“The Research Campus will be a thriving scientific community where the best minds will shape the way we understand nutrition and its relationship to disease.”—David H. Murdock—NC Research Campus Founder and Visionary.

I see this as an excellent example of non-applied Research. This is depicted in the Building Competitive Services & Wares diagram to the right where Business does not overlap in the Research block area. The NC Research Campus is unique in that there will be Scientists from 7 NC Universities. They will have access to state of the art equipment, types that would not be practical for an individual University to own but as partners with other Universities all benefit from a common research resource. Applied research is in the area where the Business Block overlaps the Research Block. Pepsi Cola announced at the dedication they will be a partner with the center and will focus on taking the research results into the marketplace. Other Business Partners are already on the campus with others expected to join. More information related to the diagram can be found at Focus on Business Engine.

Several years ago I heard somewhere that a Visionary sees what the future can be, an Administrator gets the most out of the paradigm where he is operating and a Leader is someone that can see the future (invisible) and move from the old paradigm to the new paradigm. David Murdock is a prime example of a Leader in this respect.

Hopefully this blog entry will give the reader a new set of eyes regarding “New ways of thinking inside and outside the Box.”

Inspiring Entrepreneur ......... Letter to Editor

The following was printed in the Letters to the Editor in the Marion Star & Enterprise on October 15, 2008.

Dear Editor,
The Inspiring Entrepreneur in the Sept. 24 issue of the Marion Star & Mullins Enterprise impressed me; it was not the typical letter to the editor. I, too, feel, as Kimberly Genwright does, that there is a need for more wisdom and more opportunities to provide for improvement in the paradigm of Historical Underutilized Business (HUB) Zones of which Marion County is one.

Several years ago, I started some research by looking at two areas, The Piedmont Triad Area in central North Carolina, where I now live, and the North East Strategic Area, which includes Marion County, where I was born and lived until going away to college. By looking at the two areas it gave me a better understanding. ... It is insightful to compare them and examine how they are dealing with their challenges. I discov­ered some interesting things in the process.

One of those was that Marion had a REWARD program that uses Work Keys for enabling work force for employment. When I discovered REWARD, I visited Dan Breeding to better understand it. Here the Piedmont Triad Partnership has a grant from the Department of Labor for a WIRED program that also has Work Keys as a facet of its effort for enabling the workforce. I am a member of Marion County Progress to better understand how they are addressing the challenges.

Since I find gloom and doom as I visit Marion County, let me share what happened here in Greensboro. Several years ago the inner city was a dead zone; today it is alive and developing as a very attractive place to live. What woke up Greensboro was an economic report that was full of gloom and doom. Several people came together and formed Action Greensboro; which has been and still is a catalyst for development and improving Greensboro. It wasn't easy, but people with a passion turned Greensboro from a dead zone into a striving and attractive area to live and work.

One of the best-kept secrets here in Greens­boro is the Nussbaum Center for Entrepreneurship. It started in an old bank building, when I first visited it, the conference room was the bank vault. Some people with a vision put together a plan to turn an old textile building into a Business Incubator Center. Today it has over 100 graduates and over 100 associates with a wide variety of types of businesses. It seems to me that Marion needs to encourage entrepreneurs to start businesses, because they have so much potential for strengthening the economy.

During the past 20 years, I have been plagued with charts and diagrams of models that I now call Metaphors for the 21st Century. One of the metaphors is the Innovative Engine.
It is a team with five hats. The simplest way to think about it is to look at a room with four cor­ners. In corner one is the marketplace where the Customer Hat resides, in corner two is produc­tion and service, where Technologist Hat resides, in corner three is where the Engineer Hat does development and in the fourth corner is the where the Scientist Hat does Research; in the middle of the room is the Business Hat that manages the process of the four other hats.

These five hats are the innovative engine of an entity, be it small or large enterprise or just an individual trying to solve a problem. The essential steps are to Research, Develop, Produce, Market and Manage the operation. This is a cycle where there is continuous improve­ment to the product or service that is being pro­vided to the Customer. Marion County needs innovative engines for success in the future.

Thanks for letting me share these thoughts with your readers.
Best Regards.
Lonnie H. Baxley Jr.

Quality Education .....

During the 1990s while I was teaching at NCA&T Quality of education became a focus of my thinking and has continued until today. The graphic here was created during the initial stages of this thinking. It depicts the quality of the education pipeline at various stages; the size of the "Q" is an indicator of the quality of education products flowing through the pipeline. Note the areas where there is low "q" on lower levels and where large "Q" are above. This shows that the education quality has been improved at a higher level when a low quality was flowing into the pipeline.

When I graduated from a small country school in South Carolina and entered the university; I had to take several non-credit courses to make up for courses not taught in the small country school where I received my High School Diploma. This demonstrates low quality due to lack of resources in the school to teach the necessary courses for university entry requirements.

Low quality can also occur from the dis-engagement of students in the learning process or poor quality teachers. I understand there is research that indicates that students start to dis-engage from the education process between the grades of third and sixth. From my experience with the IEEE Education Activities with local K-12 schools this appears to have some merit. Our Central NC Section IEEE Education Activities Team conducted a pilot session with a fifth AIG class in 2008 and from what I observed this class was still very much engaged. As you talk with students, you can get a sense if they are still engaged with school.

I read a recent article by the Herman Group, reporting on the percentage of employees that are dis-engaged with their work. There seems to be a universal problem of dis-engagement in our society. High dropout rates in schools, dis-interest in work, lack of spiritual development. "Quality comes from Ownership with Integrity and appropriate Resources in a healthy Paradigm - lhb" seems valid here. Some of the problems of dis-engagement may be due to the un-healthy paradigm in which people are found; be it schools, workplace or spiritual environments.

In education there has been a lot of emphasis on the "No Child Left Behind" for the lower bar achievers; but with less emphasis on the higher bar achievers. There needs to be a balance between the two. If we look at the chart on my April 18th blog we see there are various levels of skills that are required for a successful 21st century company. The lower level rountine skills are the ones that the lower bar achievers are going to find themselves in and the higher bar achievers are the ones that will be in the creative work diamond and will be making an impact on the 21st century economy. We need to encourage them all to find their place in the world where they can take ownership and make a difference!

Paradigm Shifts .... 21st Century Skills

In my April 18th blog entry I introduced a chart from "Tough Choices or Tough Times" and discussed "Value Streams ...... 21st Century Skills". In today's News & Record May 5, 2008, there is an article by David Brooks which I think ties in with this discussion and addresses the paradigm shift of skills revolution we are experiencing.

He discusses how the globalization paradigm has turned out to be very convenient for politicians. "It allows them to blame foreigners for economic woes." .... ".. there's a problem with the way the globalization paradigm has evolved. It doesn't really explain most of what is happening in the world."

He goes on to say "The central process driving this is not globalization. It's the skills revolution. We're moving into a more demanding cognitive age. In order to thrive, people are compelled to become better at absorbing, processing and combining information. This is happening in localized and golbalized sectors, and it would be happening even if you tore up every free trade deal ever inked." "The globalization paradigm leads people to see economic development as a form of foreign policy, as a grand competition between nations and civilizations. These abstractions, called 'the Chinese' or 'the Indians,' are doing this or that. But the cognitive age paradigm emphasizes psychology, culture and pedagogy -- specific processes that foster learning. .... If you understand that you are living at the beginning of a cognitive age, your're focusing on the real source of prosperity and understand that that your anxiety is not being caused by a foreigner." "It's not globalization and the skills revolution are contradictory processes. But which paradigm you embrace determines which facts and remedies you emphasize." He further emphasizes that it's time to move beyond the globalization paradigm thinking.

What captured my attention in this article is the importance of the skills revolution which ties in with my previous blog on the importance of 21st century skills. In the global supply chain there are a triplett of materials, information and financial chains. The diamond in the chart shows creative work as high importance in a competitive marketplace and our educational supply chain must be developing the future workforce with these necessary 21st century skills.

In other parts of this blog and in our website we discuss Metaphors for the 21st Century (M21C) and the importance of the Innovative Engine in building competitive services & wares.