The great city of Spokane isn’t just home to 200,000 Washingtonians east of the Cascades, it’s also home to three of BGI’s most ambitious and active MBA candidates: Jessica Anundson, Beth Robinette and Jessa Lewis. · Read More

For thousands of years we’ve farmed to eat, to produce fiber, and feed our livestock.  In the 20th century, we farmed for fuels, producing ethanol and diesel from farm commodities like corn and soybean.  Within the next few years, we could also ‘farm’ to fly – producing advanced aviation biofuels not from food crops, but farmed · Read More · Read More

Most are familiar with the revolution of microenterprise and microlending spreading through-out the developing world. Grameen Bank, and it’s founder Muhammad Yunus were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2006 for unleashing entrepreneurship in places never thought possible. Which lessons learned would be applicable across the US, across Washington state? There is a growing community · Read More · Read More

Despite the ever-present dire news that surrounds us every day, it is still a shock when real consequences of the shrinking economy hit close to home. That’s exactly what is happening  across Washington as we internalize just what an $8.4 billion (and counting) deficit really means. Every day we read of protests and disagreements throughout · Read More · Read More

Filed under: Agriculture, Clean Technology, Private Sector, Research, Washington The state of Washington has the ambition to be a major player in solving the energy and environmental challenges of the future.  Can we use our proximity and connections in the Pacific Rim to aid this effort?  Initiated by Washington’s private sector, the US-China Clean Energy Forum is · Read More · Read More

How often do we guess, assume, rely on the street narrative regarding our business commmunity, its competitiveness and performance?  While the available data can never fully describe our economy, the most recent cluster analysis of Washington state’s economy comes close. Authored by Paul Sommers, William Beyers, and Andrew Wenzl, they have detailed the geography, indentified the · Read More · Read More

Any business or institution with distant, multiple locations knows the tension – aligning the mission, goals, and protocol of headquarters with the operational reality of the local branch office.   When do you ask permission? Seek forgiveness?  Plead ignorance?  You’ll find no written guide on how to be a good branch manager.  And, with WSU itself · Read More · Read More

I attended Imagine Tomorrow, with hundreds of high school students coming to Pullman in a creativity contest related to energy.  I can only hope that we’ll be as creative in studying the feasibility for a virtual college of sustainability and the environment. Specifically, I’m hoping it advances our thinking regarding two issues of the skeptics – creating · Read More · Read More

WSU was originally located through a competition among locales vying for a state institution within its local economy.  Manhattan, Fargo, Columbia…these are among the towns in other states – like Pullman in Washington – that won the prize.  The mandate of the land grant universities, unlike other kinds of higher education before (and since), was to · Read More · Read More

I have always found it difficult to work on anything where I couldn’t observe progress.  Most of my life I relied on agriculture to fill this need, looking back at the furrow, the field, the farm, the year.  Sow/reap, birth/death, summer/winter – North Dakota never left one wanting for cycles.  My experiences in research and · Read More · Read More