The Value of (Some) Awards

In the past eight August issues, I have used a portion of this column to ask a favor. I’m doing so again this year: I would like you to help us identify a small company of notable achievement for an annual project that we conduct in conjunction with Associated Bank and Deluxe Corporation.

In December, we’ll feature our annual Small-Business Success Stories, highlighting eight to 10 small companies with achievements worthy of celebration. If you know a compelling story about any Minnesota company with fewer than 500 employees, we would like to learn about it. It can be a client of yours, a company run by a friend, or even your own company.

What makes a compelling story? It could involve a turnaround, rapid early growth, an unusual product innovation, notable longevity, or the overcoming of an unusual challenge. It could involve growth in a declining industry or a dilemma admirably addressed—or any other attribute engendering admiration.

Do put your suggestion in writing—a single-spaced page or two would be about right—and include the annual revenues and number of employees for the company you are nominating. (There wouldn’t be much context without that information, would there?) Send it to me, please, by August 6. In addition to featuring the honorees in the magazine, we will honor them in person at an awards dinner in January. E-mail is fine, as is the U.S. Mail (Jay Novak, Twin Cities Business, 220 South Sixth Street, Suite 500, Minneapolis, MN 55402).

The evening when recipients of the Small-Business Success Stories awards are honored is always one of my favorites of the year. Another is the night when recipients of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year awards (see page 29) are announced. The stories of the winners are always entertaining and inspiring; they are also reassuring.

They remind us that enterprise is enduring—and that here in Minnesota (and in the Dakotas and in my home state of Wisconsin, the states from which this region’s Entrepreneurs of the Year are chosen), there is no shortage of engagement in activities that build industries and expand economies. They show us that financial acumen is being combined with entrepreneurial vitality in the process of building businesses.