On the second day of the recent press preview at the 2011 North American International Auto Show in Detroit, a group of Ann Arborites gathered around a sleek-looking, gleaming blue electric scooter and exchanged banter.

Bob Lutz, an investor in Ann Arbor-based Current Electric, plans to take one to the firm's electric scooters on the road when "the snow is off the highway." (Photos by the writer.)

“So, Bob,” says Erik Kauppi, founder and chief engineer of Current Motor, the maker of the scooter. “Are we going to see you tooling around Ann Arbor’s streets on one of these things soon?”

“Bob” is Bob Lutz, the father of the electric Chevy Volt, the sexiest young thing at the auto show – on four wheels, that is. “As soon as the snow is off the highway, I’ll stop by with my checkbook,” Lutz says.

Lutz is now retired from GM, but is far from quitting his advocacy of electric vehicles. He opened up his checkbook last year to Current Motor, becoming an investor in, and adviser to, the company. Just how much did he invest?

“It’s enough to demonstrate a solid interest and small enough so that if this fails I won’t be terribly distressed about it,” Lutz says. “That’s the way I like to invest.” But, he says, the leadership at Current is going about it the right way, so he is confident in their success.

“They know where they’re going and they’re going about it the right way. They don’t have dreams of grandeur like Vetrix did, when they put hundreds of millions of dollars in and then built a huge plant to produce 80,000 a year, and sold 5,000,” Lutz says, referring to a now-infamous and oft-cited blunder of one of Current’s competitors.

Peter Scott, Current’s president, is proud of the way the company bootstrapped itself, armed with just a few hundred thousand dollars from investors. Competitors like Zero or Brammo needed millions of dollars to bring their products to market. Vetrix, Scott says, spent $180 million to get their electric scooter to market. “We did it for under $400,000.”

Part of the reason is that while the Current is assembled in Ann Arbor, none of the parts are manufactured here. They don’t make the plastic or metal. Current develops the electronics and the critical control systems and then they “tie the components together into a better bike.”

Also, “getting to market,” in Current’s case, means about a half-dozen test bikes being driven by initial customers. Current’s first customer was a guy in Atlanta, who tested out the company’s “beta bike.” Based on his input, they made a great deal of engineering improvements over the course of last summer. They’ve delivered a total of six pre-production bikes in Ann Arbor and a couple of other cities.

This strategy of having just a few enthusiasts test drive and review their bikes worked so well, now they’re trying it on a larger scale. At the auto show, the company announced a “test pilot” program. They’re going to lower the price by about $2,000 – placing it in the $4,000-$6,000 range, if customers agree to give them feedback and to tell all their friends about their bikes via social media.

Peter Scott, CEO of Current Motor.

“We want to get the bikes in people’s hands, we want real customers to tell us what is good and bad about the bikes,” Scott says. “We obviously have to bring on more support people, so we are really going to make sure that those are happy and satisfied customers.”

Scott is confident that these “happy and satisfied” customers will spread the word once they get on these bikes. Not only do people “want to be green and want to be seen being green,” he says, but there is something about riding these things that is a transformative experience. He calls the reaction he sees from newbies after a test ride “The Electric Vehicle Grin.”

“They just have a big smile on their face, and they go, ‘It’s so quiet.’ That is the best-selling feature,” Scott says.

The company was formed about two years ago when Ann Arbor’s John Harding bought a Chinese-made electric scooter “and quickly broke it.” So, being a DIY tinkerer, he fixed it himself, then started assembling more, himself, to sell. Harding met Erik Kauppi, the brains behind Current’s control system, and together they set off on a path to build a better bike.

Scott came into the picture later, when Harding and Kauppi asked the business incubator Ann Arbor SPARK to give them a hand in building a business plan.

“But, then, you know, SPARK likes to do these dating things where you work for the company,” Scott says. “You look at them, they look at you, you like each other, then I joined the company full-time a little over a year ago.”

Why? Because, he says, the inventors know what they’re doing, they’re good guys, and “In general, I’m a greenie. … And I love developing new markets that don’t exist.”

And, despite all you read about the future of transportation being electric, the market is still in its infancy. Even electric guru Bob Lutz knows that.

“The whole electrification of cars, the media kind of gives the impression that, well, in two to three years, everything will be electric,” Lutz says. “No, it’s going to be a very gradual transition. Twenty years from now, electric vehicles may account for 15%, max, of total new vehicle sales.”

The transition will be gradual, but even American society will change – perhaps not as quickly as Asians or Europeans – but it will change.

“Twenty or 30 years ago,” Lutz says, “you suggested to somebody that they look at a compact car and they’d say, ‘I’ll be damned if I ever put my family in one of those little tin cans. Give me a Buick Roadmaster, one of those 20-foot monsters.’ And now everybody looks at those and says, ‘I can’t believe I actually drove one of those.’”

Scooter-agnostic Ann Marie Sastry, CEO of the lithium-ion battery startup Sakti 3, which is based in Ann Arbor. She's standing next to a scooter made by Current Electric.

So, meanwhile, back at the auto show, Lutz, Kauppi, Scott and others gathered around the display model, exchanging technical details. Standing next to Lutz is Ann Arbor’s Ann Marie Sastry, a University of Michigan professor and CEO of the lithium-ion battery startup Sakti 3 – another startup that promises to change the world. For now, they discuss the future.

“We’re going to remain battery-agnostic as we develop our scooter,” Kauppi informs the group.

“That’s OK,” Sastry replies. “We’re remaining scooter-agnostic as we develop our battery.”

About the writer: Howard Lovy is a Michigan-based freelance writer who focuses on technology and innovation.

Ann Marie Sastry, CEO and co-founder of Sakti3, at her company's booth at the Detroit auto show. (Photo by the writer.)

But Sastry and her company, Ann Arbor-based Sakti3, is far from “out in the cold.” They are in the auto business for the long haul and do not plan on being relegated to a basement booth forever. Eventually, if all goes well, her company’s battery technology will be powering the cars upstairs on the main show floor’s Electric Avenue.

What is it about the “Eureka moment” in her UM lab that prompted her to help found a company two years ago? What is it that turned the heads and opened the wallets of the Michigan Economic Development Corp. and cleantech venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, who chipped in $2 million out the gate? What exactly is her company’s battery technology?

Here’s her answer: “We’re interested in both materials and manufacturing technologies at Sakti3. So, we’re sort of looking at the intersection of those things.”

She pauses. She grins slightly, then says somewhat apologetically: “Sorry, I know that’s not good enough.”

This is Sastry’s polite way of saying that any further information is proprietary. She will only add that, “We are working on a manufacturing technology, and we think that’s one of the bottlenecks.”

It’s not surprising that she is guarded. The future of the auto industry is electric – at least, so says Michigan’s governor – and the future of electric plug-in vehicles depends on some big technological leaps in battery technology. If you think you have the secret sauce, you’re not going to tell everybody. Eventually, Sastry says, “We’ll all duke it out in the marketplace.”

Technology Transfer: From Academia

That kind of unabashedly capitalistic tough talk would have been practically unheard-of coming from a university professor in eras gone by – when academics were supposed to be in research for purely academic reasons.

David Cole, who heads the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor, remembers the ’70s, when it seemed like a dirty little secret for an academic to commercialize a technology he or she developed. In some cases, Cole says, it’s about academic purity. In other cases, it’s jealousy. “Some people work on technologies that can be commercialized, others do not.”

Sastry says the technology developed in her lab could have gone a number of ways, but in the end she chose automotive battery development rather than pure academics.

“When the founders looked at some results we had, some technology we were looking at, they thought, ‘OK we could absolutely write more papers on this subject and go down that road and try to really focus on this as an academic exercise or we could really go down another road, which is to take what we have and see if we can build it in the steps required for commercialization.’ Both things are difficult. They’re just different.”

Sastry is fortunate enough to work in an academic culture where commercialization is not only no longer frowned upon, but actively encouraged – especially by UM President Mary Sue Coleman.

“The culture has totally turned around,” Sastry says, and not just at UM but in academia broadly.

“There is this space between what we do in our laboratories and getting into commercialization that we have to address,” Sastry says, speaking of a disconnect between the basic research done at universities and their transitions into tangible benefits for consumers. “And we have to help address it. It can’t be all just (marketplace) pull. There has to be some (academic) push.”

Sastry credits Coleman for pushing this cultural turnaround at UM. “Our president has been very specific. She believes that we need to enable tech transfer, and has funded more offices and centers to do that.”

But, she says, no matter how much help a company gets, it’s tough out there.

“It’s a high degree of luck, there’s a high degree of naïveté, there’s a high degree of optimism,” Sastry says, of founding a company.

“In our case, we want to put batteries in cars, so we have a lot to learn about cars.”

The university did not push her in the direction of automotive, she says. The University of Michigan has to rely on the “passion and vision of researchers” to determine where things are going to go. The university, as a whole, starts up very diverse types of companies, from nanotech to biotech to energy and materials.

Cole says that most technologies emerging from blue-sky research can go in multiple directions.

Technology Transfer: What Direction?

“I don’t think Sakti3 would see themselves as … a battery manufacturer,” Cole says. For that to happen, it takes extra push – a combination of public and private funding, in Sakti3′s case – to transition from idea to an actual company that makes things. And Sakti3 is still early stage.

“You see, the one thing that is true with intellectual property is that it’s actually fairly inexpensive,” Cole says. “It’s when you go to commercialize it, put in manufacturing capabilities, that it becomes a different story.”

To help move the “story” along in 2008, the MEDC designated Sakti3 as a Michigan Center of Energy Excellence and awarded the firm $3 million to accelerate its efforts to move to a prototype and to partner with the University of Michigan. This was added to an initial $2 million in financing from Khosla Ventures, led by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Khosla has his hands in many alternative energy and automotive enterprises, including Fisker Automotive.

“We were really lucky to engage with Khosla Ventures almost as soon as we decided to do a company,” Sastry says. “There’s a real similarity in approach there, which is great.

“Working with KV is incredible because they really know what they’re doing. They really know a lot about building businesses. We think we know something about building batteries, so that’s really good,” Sastry laughs.

It’s a marriage that works out because there is only so much a bunch of academics can do. You need expert venture capitalists to take it to the next level. “In terms of the mechanics of a business, how to raise funds, how you price real estate, these are things that venture capitalists know a lot about,” she says.

Technology Transfer: Timing

So, when will Sakti3′s materials, or manufacturing technology, or process, or combination of all of them – she is still vague on that “proprietary” stuff – actually see the marketplace?

“We’re a few years off yet,” she says.

Five years? 10 years?

“A few years off,” she repeats.

Then Sastry decides to be somewhat more charitable with her information.

“To be very honest, it depends on a lot of things,” Sastry says. “Depends on how fast we run, depends on the dollars that come in, it depends on how successful and, sometimes, how lucky you are in doing the technology. So, there are a lot of variables. You know, starting a business is very risky.”

It also helps that Sakti3 has a development agreement with GM and – with her university hat on – she runs a development center called ABCD (Advanced Battery Coalition for Drivetrains) to help the automaker develop next-generation batteries.

Sakti3 currently employs fewer than 20 people in Ann Arbor, but Sastry expects that number to grow. And it will grow in Ann Arbor.

But what if, say, a Boston-based company eventually wants to buy the business, she is asked.

“It’s a fair question,” Sastry replies. “I mean, what we decided to do is to start a company to advance our technology to get it into vehicles. And so, where we’re at as an entity five or 10 years from now, I hope that we’re kicking out a lot of batteries that are going into really good cars. There’s a lot of steps between now and then.”

So, at this stage of the company’s development, Sakti3′s goals match those of the University of Michigan to commercialize its basic technology and the goals of the state of Michigan to make the state a center for next-generation automotive battery technology and manufacturing.

“The thing that’s nice about our situation is that the government of the region that’s most important to us – where our customers live – is also strongly supportive of what we’re doing,” Sastry says. “How often does that happen?”

Veteran journalist Howard Lovy has focused his writing the last several years on science, technology and business. He was news editor at Small Times, a magazine focusing on nanotechnology and microsystems, when it first launched in Ann Arbor in 2001. His freelance work has appeared in Wired News, Salon.com, X-OLOGY Magazine and The Michigan Messenger. His current research focus includes the future of the auto industry.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm and David Cole, chairman of Ann Arbor's Center for Automotive Research, talk batteries and electric cars during a press preview day for the Detroit auto show. (Photos by the writer.)

It is the first day of the press preview for the 2010 North American International Auto Show and Ann Arbor’s David Cole is strolling down “Electric Avenue.”

The “Avenue” is an actual strip of Cobo Center real estate where electric-vehicle makers show off their wares. But it is also a branch of a metaphorical road, paved with “green technology,” that is supposed to lead to Michigan’s future.

Cole is skeptical. Not that he doesn’t think that the auto industry is getting cleaner and greener – he and his Ann Arbor-based Center for Automotive Research (CAR) have been instrumental in steering Detroit down this path. But he is skeptical that it is happening as quickly as many in politics and the media have hyped it. And the hyperbole has been flying fast and furious so far at this year’s Detroit auto show.

Green Dreams

A self-described natural introvert, Cole is nevertheless not shy about throwing just a little cold water on green dreams to whomever will listen. And, as Cole is one of only a handful of first-tier automotive analysts, a great many people listen.

On the first day of the auto show press preview, those listeners range from a reporter for a small Canadian newspaper to the governor of the state of Michigan.

In fact, Cole is talking about how all-electric vehicles will remain nothing but a niche product for the foreseeable future, when Gov. Jennifer Granholm strolls by, going the other direction on Electric Avenue.

“Governor, how are you?” he says, as Granholm steps away from her entourage and warmly greets him. The two of them launch into a conversation that one senses is a continuation of a previous dialog, or an ongoing one, that they have been engaging in for some time. It’s about battery technology – a topic that is near and dear to Granholm and her vision for Michigan’s economic revival as a center for automotive battery manufacturing.

Cole is repeating his mantra that the batteries that will power the plug-in electric vehicles – which the federal and state governments are pushing – are still not ready to transform and revive the auto industry, no matter how hard the government hypes them.

“The concern that I have is that we drive it too hard before the battery is economical,” Cole tells Granholm. “And for the next five years, it’s just not going to be economical.”

The governor responds that federal and state incentives – for battery makers to improve the product, and for consumers to buy them – should help bridge that gap.

Cole: “As long as there’s a realistic approach on the regulatory side so that you don’t drive things faster than …”

“… what’s doable,” Granholm interrupts.

“… than what’s doable,” Cole continues. “And it looks like zero to five years is not going to be economical. But once you get five-plus, that’s where the numbers start to kick in.”

Granholm has a rebuttal for Cole, but to understand where the rest of the conversation is going, let’s rewind Cole’s auto show tour about an hour, and listen in on a discussion he had with a Canadian journalist.

Norman DeBono, of the London (Ontario) Free Press, interviews David Cole.

Norman De Bono of the London (Ont.) Free Press approached Cole following a Toyota press conference to talk about the revival of the U.S. and Canadian auto industries.

During the interview, De Bono makes a statement rather than posing a question. “This comeback is going to be a green comeback,” he says, echoing sentiments often repeated as fact among the auto show press corps.

“Well,” Cole said, drawing out the word for emphasis, “this is a really big issue because, frankly, we don’t know whether the price of fuel next year or in five years is going to be $1.50 a gallon or $5 a gallon.”

A buck fifty, even two bucks, consumers don’t care so much. Five dollars a gallon and, yes, the green auto revolution is on.

Right now, though, the reason the auto show is filled with small, efficient hybrids has little to do with what consumers want. It’s about meeting new government fuel efficiency standards. This is a government push, and not a consumer pull. What is uncertain in all this is where exactly the consumer fits in, along with the price of fuel. That’s a “wildcard,” Cole said. And with all the alternative fuels and new battery technologies available, he suggested, we’re likely to see less-expensive gas.

That point brings us back to Cole’s conversation with Granholm over on Electric Avenue, where he tells the governor that it will be another five years before the cost of new lithium-ion batteries will become “economical.”

“When you say ‘economical,’ you’re referring to economical for the company,” Granholm says.

“No,” Cole replies. “I’m saying economically in terms of consumer purchase.”

“Well, except for the (federal and state government) incentives,” Granholm says, hopefully.

“Yeah, the incentives are a bridging strategy,” Cole replies, then quickly adds. “But it’s not there yet.”

What Cole is doing in this exchange with the governor is what he always does no matter what the audience: be sober, be realistic, don’t let anybody get too carried away or too short-sighted.

“One of the things that we’ve tried to do is to get people to think very realistically about technology, to not get really too far out or too far behind on it, but … focus on what’s … realistic, and we have a pretty good feel for that,” Cole says. “It’s easy for people to get caught up in the hype of technology.”

Stone Cole Sober

This kind of sober analysis has worked for Cole and makes his advice and analysis very much sought-after by the news media and auto industry leaders. An example: Chrysler/Fiat CEO Sergio Marchionne, in town for the auto show, called Cole and wanted a meeting. Note that Cole did not need to call Marchionne.

Cole dismisses the attention and just says that he is quoted a great deal in the media simply because he is old enough to be in a lot of Rolodexes. Really, he’s much more comfortable out of the spotlight.

“I’m an introvert,” Cole says. “It’s not easy. I’m not a sales type of guy at all. I act like an extrovert when I’m out and about, but that’s not my normal inclination. I would tend to be more in the back row rather than somebody that sits in the front row.”

“Out and about” at the auto show, one could hardly tell Cole is an introvert. Auto racing magnate Roger Penske passes Cole in the corridor and waves. “It’s a good place to wander around and make connections,” Cole says of the auto show.

David Cole chats with Bruce Brownlee, senior executive for external affairs at the Toyota Planning Center.

Cole runs into Bob Larsen, of Argonne National Laboratory, a Department of Energy facility in Chicago. He talks to Larsen about developing a “portal to get IP in and out of the auto industry,” and wants the DOE to be involved.

“I’d love to chat about it with you, but I’ve got to go say hello to this guy over here,” Cole says, turning to Bruce Brownlee of the Toyota Planning Center in the Ann Arbor area, to whom he speaks quietly – a conversation clearly not for public consumption.

Asked later what he and Brownlee were discussing, Cole said, “There’s a legal case where I happen to know both sides pretty well and it’s a bad situation. They need to settle it.” Cole will not say what the case involves, except that it’s “something related to technology.”

Window into the Soul

Moving past the Ford displays and a giant robot arm, Cole stops to chat with Doug Pergament, automotive vice president for Sirius XM Radio. They briefly chat about business. Cole: “Are profits starting to come together?” Pergament: “Yes, we’ve had three consecutive quarters of positive cash flow.”

Then they talk about what could be described as a window into Cole’s soul: Which of the 130 or so satellite radio stations does he listen to?

The orange device behind David Cole is a robot arm used in auto manufacturing.

“Now, I’m a pretty conservative guy,” Cole says. “I listen to Fox News.” He also loves Laugh USA because of its good, “clean” comedy, and Radio Classics – old shows like The Lone Ranger and The Shadow – because it makes him “feel younger.”

Howard Stern? Well, when he signed on to Sirius, “for both my wife and I that was a negative.”

Pergament says he understands that Stern is controversial, but getting him on board helped satellite radio achieve “critical mass.”

There may be a good business reason behind Sirius signing Stern, which Cole can appreciate, but he remains unimpressed. “There are some people that are into his humor,” Cole says. “I am not.”

Moving along, a freelance writer for The New York Times decides to politely chide Cole for his conservatism. They talk about President Obama’s proposed health-care plan. Cole is opposed because he has a problem with that massive of a “government takeover.” The NYT writer’s trap is set, and he springs it. “You conservative guys jumped over the fence for a little while,” he says, when it came to a government bailout of the auto companies.

Well, that’s different, Cole says, refusing to be baited. Bankrupt auto companies “would have taken the whole supply structure down, and then taken the industry out,” he says. So, government-run health care? Bad. Government bailout of auto companies? Good.

He has no problem balancing the two, just as he has no problem working with people of all political stripes.

Where’s Ann Arbor?

This takes us back to Gov. Granholm, with whom Cole enjoys a good “apolitical” working relationship despite philosophical differences. “In terms of auto, we are politically, absolutely neutral and our focus is to make sure that we use the best knowledge that there is,” Cole says.

Granholm confirms this relationship.

“Part of our strategy – the battery strategy we’ve taken on as a state – was thanks to the advice of Dr. Cole’s group,” Granholm says. “If CAR had not advised us that this is where it’s headed, we wouldn’t be doing this.

“A year ago, I signed the bills here for the battery incentives, and here we are this year, when coupled with the federal, Michigan really is going to be the battery capital of the world. So, yeah, CAR has been instrumental.”

If Michigan is truly going to be manufacturing batteries, then Ann Arbor’s role will continue to be the intellectual property hub.

“Ann Arbor’s a unique community,” Cole says. “We’re probably never going to have anybody make anything there,” but it is the place where the ideas come from – largely through University of Michigan President Mary Sue Coleman’s variation on the old academic mantra, “Partner or perish.” UM is aggressively pursuing business relationships to turn academic ideas into business realities.

“Ann Arbor’s got a community where you have critical mass in some important areas related to people that generally are on the front edge of technology,” Cole says.

It also doesn’t hurt that, especially in a region that gets a bad rap nationwide, Ann Arbor is seen as a tolerable place to live.

“One of the real values of Ann Arbor, particularly in southeast Michigan, is it’s a place where you can get people to come from outside,” Cole says. It’s very difficult to get, say, technically skilled people to come from other areas. You can do it, but it’s hard because of the state of the economy, the state’s reputation and the state of the state.

Cole then adds something that could also describe his own role at the Detroit auto show.

“Ann Arbor has some ability to attract.”

Veteran journalist Howard Lovy has focused his writing the last several years on science, technology and business. He was news editor at Small Times, a magazine focusing on nanotechnology and microsystems, when it first launched in Ann Arbor in 2001. His freelance work has appeared in Wired News, Salon.com, X-OLOGY Magazine and The Michigan Messenger. His current research focus includes the future of the auto industry.

An Accent Reduction DVD shows a close-up of a speaker pronouncing the word "job." At the bottom of the screen, the word is spelled phonetically.

When Ann Arbor educator and entrepreneur Judy Ravin claims she can say, “What? What did you say?” in at least five different languages, she is not bragging about her multilingual prowess. She hears those phrases too often as she travels abroad. Just because she speaks the languages does not necessarily mean she is easily understood in all of them.

“And that doesn’t feel good,” she says. “None of us like that.”

It was mutual frustration (between speaker and the spoken-to) during her trips abroad that led her to think about how that must feel to immigrants in the United States as they attempt to set up their careers here.

And out of that frustration was the idea that eventually led to the Accent Reduction Institute, based in the Godfrey Building on North Fourth Avenue in Ann Arbor’s Kerrytown district. With a faculty of 18 contractors and three full-time directors, Ravin’s institute has been smoothing out the rough spots for immigrant speakers for about four years. The innovation behind the business is what is officially trademarked as the “Ravin Method,” which Ravin humbly says she feels “kind of silly about.”

Accenting the Positive

But to understand what the Ravin Method is, it’s first important to answer one key question. “What is wrong with having accent?”

“There is nothing wrong with an accent,” Ravin says emphatically.

What is wrong, she says, are barriers to understanding one another. So, when does an accent – a badge of “unique cultural identity,” as Ravin says – become a true barrier? Well, there are tests potential clients can take involving the number of “critical errors” made when a sound or a word is pronounced in a way that differs from the standard pronunciation pattern to such an extent that the listener cannot really understand it. But the easier way to tell is more simple. Are they being asked to repeat themselves too many times?

Tomohisa Fujiwara, an intern with Menlo Innovations, gets pronunciation instruction from Barb Niemann, director of curriculum and training for the Accent Reduction Institute.

“People know when their accent, when their speech pattern, is a language barrier,” Ravin says. “The telltale sign is when people say over and over again, ‘What? What did you say? Can you repeat that?’”

The problem is one that adults of any culture would have a problem with. When you’re under the age of two? No problem. You’re born with the ability to make all sounds. After you’re about two years old, “we learn that this thing called language is really a system of rewards,” Ravin says. Make sounds in a way parents understand, and your needs are met. Other sounds aren’t needed, so we forget them. “So, actually, what accent reduction is,” Ravin says, “is a relearning process.”

Learning Language with Your Eyes

And, as it turns out, a big part of the learning process is visual and not only auditory. In fact, ears deceive. If a sound does not exist in a speaker’s native language, he or she may simply substitute a more familiar sound. Relearning how to hear and see a sound is key to the Ravin Method.

Hook a person up to electrodes and then ask them to either speak with an accent or listen to the accent, “the crazy thing is that the part of the brain that’s responsible for visual acuity starts firing up,” Ravin says. “So we know that there needs to be a visual input for learning articulation” after a certain age. So, the Ravin Method is not simply “listen, repeat; listen repeat,” but contains visual elements as well. Where do you put your lips, your tongue, your jaw when you make a sound in English that does not exist in your native language?

Ravin’s company is four years old, but she has been thinking about these issues for much longer.

She used to teach English pronunciation for an Ann Arbor company on Liberty Street called Access International. In 1998, she went on to teach at Eastern Michigan University. Ravin knew she was on to something when she started getting requests from folks in private industry – like Pfizer, Daewoo and Federal Mogul – to help some of the workers improve their English pronunciations. Requests came from employers and employees.

“People want to be brought into the inner circle,” Ravin says. “They want to be asked their opinions and their advice.”

Building a Business

So she set up an LLC shingle and “got lots of clients.” But, she says, she felt something was missing.

“I had this horrible, nagging feeling,” Ravin says. “You know, it’s kind of like teaching a musical instrument. What we’re doing when you teach a musical instrument is you change the motor memory, usually of the fingers. In English pronunciation, we’re changing the motor memory of the speech apparatus.”

If you meet with your teacher once a week, it’s very hard to practice unless you’re given an instrument. “I felt that people needed an instrument, so to speak, in order to progress from one session to the next, from one class to the next.”

Judy Ravin, founder and president of the Accent Reduction Institute, with a DVD she developed to help non-English speakers learn to pronounce words in an understandable way.

Ravin developed an interactive DVD that takes into account all the necessary requisites needed to make a new sound that does not exist in a speaker’s first language. The methodology includes listening discrimination between sounds and then a “how-to” section. This is what you need to do with your tongue, teeth, lips and jaw.

With her software as a jumping-off point, Menlo Innovations – an Ann Arbor software consulting firm – took notice of her method. After some wheeling and dealing, Menlo decided to snatch her up and the Accent Reduction Institute was born, as a unit of Menlo.

Ravin won’t say how much Menlo paid, nor will she reveal how much revenue the company has taken in. She did say that revenue grew by some 300% in the past two years.

Physical classes in Ann Arbor account for only about 3% of the revenue, Ravin says. The rest comes from Webcam-based classes, where the client can be in Detroit or Delhi. It doesn’t matter. About twice a month, the company gives an Ann Arbor seminar called “The Sound of Success” attended by a mixture of HR directors, students and workers.

The bottom line, she says, is that employees that are understood help raise, well, the bottom line. The idea is understanding, and not denigrating cultural difference.

“An accent equals a speech pattern, equals pronunciation and, therefore, who has an accent? Everyone has an accent,” Ravin says. “So the objective is not to eliminate an accent. Our objective – and this is really key for us and this is what we tell companies – our objective is to eliminate language barriers while helping people maintain their unique cultural identity.”

About the author: Veteran journalist Howard Lovy has focused his writing the last several years on science, technology and business. He was news editor at Small Times, a magazine focusing on nanotechnology and microsystems, when it first launched in Ann Arbor in 2001 as the media arm of Ardesta. His freelance work has appeared in Wired News, Salon.com, X-OLOGY Magazine and The Michigan Messenger. His current research focus includes the future of the auto industry and the U.S. criminal justice system.

Rick Snyder (File photo courtesy of Snyder for Governor)

In the week of July 20, Snyder’s camp says, expect an announcement on how that business-friendly theme might be used in a gubernatorial campaign for the Republican.

And by business, he means the “C-Level” manager, the entrepreneur, the startup team. Make them happy by creating an atmosphere in Michigan that allows them to be successful. That means stop taxing them so much, stop regulating them so much, train them in how to be successful entrepreneurs – then the rest of the state’s economic puzzle will fall into place.

It’s what Snyder calls “helping the demand side” of Michigan’s unemployment problem. Help businesses find executives from Michigan’s rich talent supply, help create a business climate that favors them, then watch them succeed and dip into Michigan’s waves of unemployed.

“I would argue you’re helping the demand side even more by placing someone in a successful startup team, and letting them have an opportunity to be successful,” Snyder said in a recent interview with The Ann Arbor Chronicle. “Those are the people that are going to go hire the five and 10 other people.”

This is the formula that has worked so far for Snyder the businessman, so why not for Snyder the politician?

The Small Business Tune: Who’s Your Customer?

To understand how Snyder came to those conclusions, first look at both the early and the latter part of his career – when the music he played was “small business.”

Snyder was born in Battle Creek, but it was at the University of Michigan where he shined as a wunderkind in the late ’70s and early ’80s. He earned his bachelor’s, his MBA and his law degree all before he turned 23. From there, he used his newly-minted credentials for business at the Detroit office of the accounting firm of Coopers & Lybrand (now PricewaterhouseCoopers), where he rose quickly and was eventually put in charge of mergers and acquisitions in the firm’s Chicago office.

It was there, handling M&As for “30 to 50 different companies from various backgrounds every year,” Snyder said, that he began to form his lifelong opinions on how to make businesses more competitive. He saw them from “what the customer side looks like.”

Now, when Snyder thinks of “customers” in a political context, he is talking about the people trying to do business in Michigan. Government needs to treat Michigan businesspeople as customers.

“Michigan needs to change our attitude more, to be treating our citizens and businesses like customers and take a customer-centric approach to things, to say our goal is to create a more competitive playing field for our companies to thrive in and to do well,” Snyder said.

And that means, in general, the “customers” are always right. Or, if not, at least assume they are honest.

“Our tax system, our regulatory system should assume that most people are good and honest people, then deal with the exceptions,” Snyder said.

A story Snyder likes to tell is about a canoe rental company in Michigan that needs five separate licenses to do business.

The solution, however, is not to make special exceptions for some companies, he says.

Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm, he said, is too focused on coming up with specialized incentives for companies to do business in Michigan – the governor’s lithium-ion battery initiative, for example, which offers tax abatements – but not addressing what he called “the fundamental issue, which is making us more competitive by fixing our overall business tax environment and our regulatory environment.”

So, if governor, Snyder would be a friend to startups. But what about the “other” kind of music – big business?

Bridging to Big Business

Well, he did help run a Fortune 500 company from 1991 to 1997. During his tenure at Gateway, the PC firm grew from a private $600 million business to $6 billion-plus publicly traded company.

But when it comes to his vision for running the big business of Michigan government, the solution can be found on the smaller, local level. The economic climate in Michigan is improving, Snyder said, no thanks to government, but rather due to local groups doing economic development work – groups like Ann Arbor SPARK, Southwest Michigan First, Techtown and Automation Alley. They’re working, he said, because they’re connecting C-Level talent with companies.

SPARK does receive local government support in the form of tax-increment financing through the Local Development Finance Authority – nearly $1 million in the next year. And last month Ann Arbor’s city council authorized supporting SPARK with $75,000 from its general fund after writing a check for $50,000 the previous year. The Washtenaw County board of commissioners is also considering a tax that would raise $250,000 annually for SPARK and SPARK East, its Ypsilanti satellite office.

For some of its programs, though, SPARK is paid for its services directly by the people who use them – as in a program Snyder helped institute at SPARK called  Shifting Gears. It’s a training program geared to help unemployed and underemployed middle-level managerial technical people, mainly from the auto industry. They have good resumes, but they need to learn how to switch from a large company to a small company – how to become involved in a startup. Snyder was a mentor to one of the Shifting Gears clients.

“The last time I met with him, just last week, he was leaning forward, bouncing, smiling, talking about how he was excited to get out there and try to find a job even though his underlying company had gone bankrupt and his situation was worse financially,” Snyder said.

These are the kinds of programs, Snyder says, that should be implemented statewide.

The Business of Governing

OK, but what has Snyder done for Michigan? Well, in 1997, Snyder decided to return to the Great Lakes State. He had a specific mission in mind – to use his expertise to launch startups – first with Avalon Investments Inc. and then with Ardesta LLC. Avalon invested in traditional tech companies, while Ardesta invests in, and helps launch, nanotechnology and microsystems companies.

Between the two, Snyder says, he has created 420 jobs in Michigan and 1,253 nationwide. The figures are based on the number of jobs at companies in which Avalon and Ardesta have made investments.

Still, Snyder’s potential candidacy suffers from lack of name recognition outside the business community. Snyder said, however, he’s not worried.

“I’m excited. I think we’re well-positioned,” he insisted. “We’re starting with strong fundamentals.

“All there is is fear and frustration that everyone has today. I don’t know of anyone happy about how Michigan is, so the starting point is that you’ve got to have a vision that will get people excited about the future.”

About the author: Veteran journalist Howard Lovy has focused his writing the last several years on science, technology and business. He was news editor at Small Times, a magazine focusing on nanotechnology and microsystems, when it first launched in Ann Arbor in 2001 as the media arm of Ardesta. His freelance work has appeared in Wired News, Salon.com, X-OLOGY Magazine and The Michigan Messenger. His current research focus includes the future of the auto industry and the U.S. criminal justice system.

Carla Wilson, corrections officer at the Washtenaw County Jail: "This uniform confuses people."

It is morningtime at the Washtenaw County Jail, and about 60 men – accused criminals all – are laying quietly awake on their bunks, eyes closed, thinking about their happy place.

Yes. Really. Criminals and their happy place.

As the men hold visions in their heads of the beach, or fishing, or picnicking with their families outside this building of concrete, steel and razor wire, the only sound is soft music from computer speakers. And the still, small voice of Cpl. Carla Wilson, a Washtenaw County corrections officer.

After the inmates are relaxed, “wiping the slate clean,” as Wilson says, for another day of incarceration, she talks to the men about the need to “have a plan” once they leave. “If you don’t have a plan …” Wilson ends the thought with a whistle. “Not good.” She urges the men to “listen to your inner voice that tells you not to do something.” If not, she says, well, this jail may be overcrowded, but there will always be a bed waiting for them.

And, she adds a word to the wise: There will always be “support coat” on the outside, spending time with your woman, taking your kids to school. Some inmates groan in knowing acknowledgment of the jail slang for an inmate’s “replacement” on the outside during incarceration.

About 15 minutes of this “guided meditation,” and life on the block returns to its normal pattern – except for one thing: Inmates line up at Wilson’s desk, making requests that they know will not be ignored under her watch. The requests range from the need for a fresh towel to an inquiry about whether a parole officer has been contacted.

This is J Block, an “open block,” where nonviolent offenders, who follow the rules and do some work on behalf of the jail, are not locked down in a cell 19 and a half hours as they otherwise would be. They can roam around the large room, get access to computers, socialize, attend classes, watch movies.

And every couple of days “Ms. Wilson” rotates through J Block, which is designated a “therapeutic block.”

“This uniform confuses people,” Wilson says in an interview. And by “people,” she means the people who wear the uniforms. “It confuses your ego.” Civilians, she says, “outrank” police officers. “We’re here to provide a service.”

It’s a service she thinks the new sheriff in town, Jerry Clayton, understands. Wilson says that Clayton, who was elected sheriff last November but who was once Wilson’s commanding officer, understands the need to do more with inmates than simply lock them up.

Derrick Jackson, director of community engagement for the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office, reflects the same sentiment: “A part of what Carla is doing – and she’s been doing it for years now – is really along with Sheriff Clayton’s philosophy of, ‘We’re more than just a holding facility.’ We do more and contribute more to the community than just arresting folks and locking people up,” Jackson says.

When you get a group of people together in a high-pressure environment, with nothing but time on their hands, “doing something positive to engage them” is not only a good thing to do, it helps produce a “safe and secure jail,” Jackson says.

We can look forward to more officers being trained in how to engage inmates in more ways than simply being a keymaster, he says.

Regarding Wilson, Jackson says, “She is definitely ahead of the curve, but it’s something that we, as an organization, have a vested interest in continuing to grow.”

Wilson is optimistic that things will move in that direction, but has seen mostly superficial evidence of that so far. She’s a contributing author to a new book, “Serving Productive Time,” written by Tom Lagana, the author of the popular book, “Chicken Soup for the Prisoner’s Soul.”

“Just a handshake. ‘Thatagirl’ and that’s about it,” from her colleagues on the book, she says. The county has highlighted the book contribution on its website.

Both Wilson and Jackson confirm that the old police culture might simply not be good enough for the future. There will be more training in how to interact with inmates beyond the military drill-sergeant style.

Wilson takes this philosophy outside the jail, too. She recently took former inmates with her to speak to a group of mothers in Detroit who have children in prison. This is part of her “Connection Principle” side business – but  she often speaks for free.

One former Washtenaw County Jail inmate and J Block resident, who goes on speaking engagements with Wilson, spoke on condition of anonymity.

“Whether it be in the recovery field, or volunteering to assist prior inmates (returning citizens) make the difficult transition back into society, her gift is her ability and desire to help others,” he says. “Having someone like that as a corrections officer was an unusual experience, especially based on the direct supervision style of other corrections officers.”

Wilson is working on a book of her own, “What If I’m Right?” which details more of her experiences at the jail, dealing with inmates and fellow officers. She is hoping that Lagana’s “Chicken Soup” publisher will take a look at the manuscript.

Meanwhile, Wilson continues to live and breathe the jail and its occupants.

“When I’m not there, I wonder how everybody’s doing,” Wilson says. “I’m hoping they have a good day. I’m hoping they have an officer who is attending to their needs, who’s being approachable and professional. That’s what I think about when I’m not there. I hope they have a good officer that day.”

Veteran journalist Howard Lovy has focused his writing the last several years on science, technology and business. He was news editor at Small Times, a magazine focusing on nanotechnology and microsystems, when it first launched in Ann Arbor in 2001. His freelance work has appeared in Wired News, Salon.com, X-OLOGY Magazine and The Michigan Messenger. His current research focus includes the future of the auto industry and the U.S. criminal justice system.