A lunch discussion about how the Grand Forks business community and UND could connect to help and learn from each other turned into the first of what leaders hope could become a regular forum.
Several dozen attended the early sessions of the event, which lasted throughout the afternoon. Officially, the title of the event-held at the Gorecki Alumni Center at UND-was "Corporate Forum: Change Management."
"There's great benefit in getting companies together to speak among themselves and share ideas about how to manage opportunities," said Keith Lund, CEO and president of the Grand Forks Region Economic Development Corp.
Lund said he and UND Provost Thomas DiLorenzo were meeting along with EDC board member Grant McGimpsey, vice president of UND's Division of Research and Economic Development, when McGimpsey shared success stories that evolved from similar forums he'd organized.
"When I was at a previous institution, I started the series of corporate forums. The idea was not to push the university onto business, but to provide a forum for businesses and companies to come together and share their experiences, their challenges, their best practices and their ideas," McGimpsey told attendees of Thursday's forum. "As a university, we want to provide a venue for that. We hope you will have conversations among yourselves that will be spurred by the panelists, and if something good comes from this ... you will be able to say 'that happened at UND.'"
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Lund said he thought the forum was a great place for a crossover of ideas, and the EDC and UND quickly committed to holding their own event. First, however, they had to come up with a focus.
"The subject everyone seems to experience is change - whether it's with customers or technology, the workforce or automation," Lund said. "There's a whole lot of subjects related to change, so it will be an open discussion about how each of these industries and companies manage change within their respective businesses."
UND President Mark Kennedy, during a brief speech, told forum participants as the self-proclaimed "chief opportunity engine for the state," it's important for UND to host events that prompt thought-provoking questions.
"It's different ideas bouncing off different folks, hitting those connections (and asking) 'how do you do it in your industry, and can it apply to my industry?' " he said. "(Those) are the type of innovations that really fuel growth in the region, fuel economic development and fuel more jobs."
The forum was broken into three tracks: agriculture, manufacturing and unmanned aircraft systems.
Agricultural panelists were Eric Halverson of Black Gold Farms, Tal Elseth of J.R. Simplot and John Oncken of True North Equipment.
Manufacturing panelists included Scott Fuller of Retrax, Bill King of Cirrus Aircraft and Stephen Dusold of Steffes Corp.
UAS panelists included Nick Flom of Northern Plains UAS Test Site, General Atomics Aeronautical Systems and Dave Hambleton of Northrop Grumman.
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Lund said organizers hoped the forum would demonstrate to participants that UND is a "potential problem solver for companies dealing with change."
"But even more so, we hope there is value in companies connecting with each other to learn from one another and potentially even connect in terms of companies being solution providers for other companies."
