Cleveland/Northeast Ohio : Featured Stories

Some entrepreneurs are born with the right stuff; others are born into the right families. Celeste Massullo, the president of Lena Fiore Inc., was blessed with both, and born to win.

A home office offers freedom and flexibility. But it can also lead to isolation, tedium and that gotta-get-out-of-here feeling. For on-their-own Ohioans yearning for professional companionship, coworking may be the answer.

Lester A. Lefton became Kent State University's 11th president in July 2006. Ranked by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching among the nation's best public research universities and among the best colleges and universities in community engagement, Kent State has been at the forefront of high-tech innovation in Northeast Ohio. hiVelocity asked Lefton about Kent State's role in Ohio's new economy and his vision for the region.

There was a time when Ohio overflowed with distilleries that made whisky, which wended its way down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans. Over time, every last one of those distilleries dried up. Now, small-scale distilleries are reviving the grand tradition.

Doug Craver never stops moving. The 47-year-old northeast Ohio native is a serial entrepreneur who's had his hand in a half-dozen tech companies since he was 25 -- including CMI, Knotice and Realeflow. He's curently president and CEO of LaunchTribe -- but prefers the title of "startup craftsman."

It's said that most startups fail within five years. Still, the possibility -- or experience -- of failure doesn't stop thousands of Ohioans from starting new businesses every year. hiVelocity talked to some successful Ohio entrepreneurs whose ingenuity and nimbleness led them to change direction or shelve ideas that weren't working. All three have different stories, but all recognized when it was time to change course and move on to new ideas.

A team of mechanical engineering students at Case Western Reserve University earlier this summer demonstrated their giant tesla coil -- an apparatus that produces extremely high-voltage, long-sparking displays. This one, they claim, not only produces long arcs of electricity, but can play songs. hiVelocity isn't sure about its future in concert halls, but we have to admit one thing: It has style.

Of the 10,000 or so African American students who enroll in U.S. engineering programs each year, fewer than 3,500 graduate with engineering degrees. The National Society of Black Engineers wants to change that, and one of its targets is Ohio.