When a few twentysomething lumbermen from Maine realized that they could use Saint Anthony Falls to power sawmills, Minneapolis was born--born, basically, on an entrepreneurial impulse. A young freight forwarder in Saint Paul came up with a better way to get cargo from steamboats into warehouses, then onto trains, and in a few years James J. Hill was building one of the great railroad empires. Bright ideas have continued turning into big enterprises here, from Cray Research and Medtronic to Geek Squad and beyond.