The Indiana Chamber’s BizVoice® magazine team is wrapping up its January-February issue this week. Included will be a special section on innovation and the state’s business future.

We won’t give away all the secrets in advance. But we’ll share a few nuggets, encouraging you to check out the full stories online on December 28 and in the print edition that will mail that same day.

In a roundtable discussion, for example, with four insightful participants, Bill Kline of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology offers: “One of the thoughts I’ve had the last few years, no matter what business or organization you’re in, you should go to bed at night thinking someone’s out there trying to put you out of business.

“They don’t want just some of your market. They want your entire business. That thought should spur some sense of urgency no matter what business or industry you’re in. There’s somebody out there trying to take all of what you’re doing.”

Kline is joined by Bob Coy, 16 Tech; Rob Martens, Allegion; and Dave Roberts, Indiana Economic Development Corporation, in looking at ways to avoid that scenario and for organizations to flourish by embracing innovation.

Other key stories include:

  • Future of manufacturing. Jason Toschlog of Flexware Innovation: “We are seeing people collect a bunch of data that’s not very valuable at all, or they’re collecting what we consider is the wrong data. As a whole, the industry is going to have to become better and more knowledgeable at discerning what is good data.”
  • Smart home development
  • Advantages of 5G technology
  • Virtual reality at work in the intensive care unit
  • Indiana Innovation Institute partnerships. Bill Kiser of IN3: “When you look at some of the technologies we are looking at, it requires significant cross-disciplinary teams that you may not find in one institution. So we really have to put together these large, purpose-built teams to drive that original idea the whole way into some sort of meaningful product or service.”

We asked nine state leaders to weigh in on innovation in their industry. Learn from, to name a few: Vid Hedge, Corteva Agriscience; Shelley Klingerman, Launch Terre Haute; Karl LaPan, Northeast Indiana Innovation Center; and more.

Bill Waltz is vice president of taxation & public finance for the Indiana Chamber. He is also an attorney and has been with the organization for nearly 15 years.