entrepreneurship : Featured Stories

Garrio Harrison believes that social media like Facebook and Twitter aren't just the latest slick marketing strategy--they've fundamentally changed the way we do business by making everything, including buying and selling, more personal, more connected, and more human. And he's founded the all-social-media-all-the-time marketing firm Doublethink to prove his point.

It's not a statue plopped in a park any more. Public art is a complex, dynamic new way of looking at the relationship between creativity and community. And Jack Becker, director of Saint Paul's Forecast Public Art, knows as much about that relationship as anybody in America. He led the effort to build up Forecast from a failing art gallery into a multitasking go-to organization for public artists around the Twin Cities and around the country, helping public art become a major public resource as well as a public delight.

What can we do to do leverage the abundant high-tech talent in Minnesota into more startups? At the MinneBar 2010 conference, geeks and investors gathered to grapple with that question--among others--and to assess the state of the tech biz in the Gopher State. The verdict: More risk-taking, more mentoring, more connectivity are needed here--but everybody can keep their cabins.

 What's the special sauce that makes so many bright people who come here stay here--and a lot people who go away, come back? (And what do we need to make that sauce even richer?) Some local creative types weigh in.