One of the great things about my job is meeting business people who are looking for innovative ways of improving business, and I recently talked to two people trying to do just that.

Bill Kappele and Beth Heffernan operate Objective Design of Experiments, a company with the goal of helping other businesses conduct tests with the least amount of time and expense as possible.

If you own a kayak company and are looking for a way to make the material stronger or weigh less, Kappele and Heffernan will teach your company’s research and development team to come up with a computer program to figure out the best potential chemistry combinations, narrowing the number of experiments needed.

“It used to be that the math was too formidable to figure out all the possible combinations,” said Kappele. “Technology has advanced to the point now that you can eliminate the need for luck.”

Having a company that teaches other businesses to improve is nothing new, of course; the consulting industry is a staple in any economy.

What’s been interesting to me is that firms like Objective DOE are taking it a step further, teaching companies to improve their research and development of products.

Instead of having scientists at a university or research lab trying to come up with material breakthroughs, Objective DOE is trying to foster it within private companies.

Kappele and Heffernan have chemistry backgrounds.

“We’re very much in the ifwe- teach-you-how-to-fish philosophy as a business mission,” Kappele said. “We don’t want to get involved with what a company is doing; we want to teach concepts in plain English and have the students return to the company and let them take it in a direction they think is best for their business.”

Objective DOE is based in Bellingham but has been doing most of its work outside the area. It has recently been turning its attention to local work. Past customers include Lucent Technologies and Lexmark International.

“There is quite an entrepreneurial spirit here in Whatcom County, so we think there is opportunity here to help people shorten the time it takes to develop products,” Kappele said. “We’ve done quite a bit of traveling, teaching other companies. It would be great if we can stay around here.”

It’s a good sign that a company like this is turning its attention locally because it believes there is plenty of innovation taking place in Whatcom County. The creation and growth of such companies will keep our economy diverse and keep us from turning into an economy wholly dependent on retail or professional services.