Name of business:  Incentive Targeting, Inc.; www.incentivetargeting.com

Mission:  Incentive Targeting, with its proprietary technologies, allows brand managers and marketing executives to perform true behavioral marketing at low cost and with minimal overhead, transforming retail marketing and fulfilling the promise of retail loyalty programs.

Began:  2007

Revenues: Incentive Targeting won the Douglass Foundation Graduate Business Plan Competition at Babson College worth more than $20,000 in funding and services.

Where:  Still working out of the Babson Hatchery, but was granted office space by Cummings Properties.

Founders:  Joshua Herzig-Marx M'08; Benjamin Sprecher; info@incentivetargeting.com; 617-869-7061; Babson  MBAs.

Employees:  Five, plus two founders

Founder's Past Life/Business:  Both Ben and Josh have served in project/ program/ product, and account-management roles as they built and sold software solutions to complex business problems in the health insurance and financial services industries.

How The Idea Began:  Ben and I grew up learning about the grocery industry—it was a family business. We realized that an industry with so much revenue (over $500 billion) but such low margins (1-2% for grocery chains) there had to be an opportunity to change the game.

Initial Preparation to Germinate Idea:  We have been trying out different ideas, discussing them with industry insiders for years. It was clear when we began discussing the plan for Incentive Targeting that we were finally on to something.

Favorite Thing about the Business:  We like that it scales—it requires minimal capital investment.

Biggest Challenge:  Neither Ben nor I have a marketing or grocery background. We need to work hard and sell ourselves as knowledgeable in this industry.

Lesson Learned:  It's not enough just to talk to people and ask advice—you need to listen. Our idea has evolved so much and if it's at all good, that's due to the considerable time and attention we received from so many industry and business leaders.

The Babson Energy and Environmental Club is proud to announce that its Entrepreneurial Energy Expo (E3), which took place on March 27^th 2008, was the largest student-run cleantech conference of 2008.  With 400 attendees and over 40 professional exhibitors on site, E3 set the scene for an educational day of networking and knowledge-sharing amongst students and regional clean technology professionals, further exhibiting Babson's presence in the New England Cleantech Cluster.

The event kicked off with the groundbreaking of the Babson Wind Turbine.  With this installation, Babson becomes the first school in the Boston area to harness wind energy through an on-campus turbine.  The ceremony was highlighted by speeches presented by BEEC Co-President Clinton White, Dean of Faculty Fritz Fleischmann, Representative Alice Peisch and Senator Scott Brown.  At its close, Babson was presented with a Massachusetts State Senate Official Citation by Senator Brown.

Following the groundbreaking ceremony, a rousing keynote address was given by Jesse Fink of MissionPoint Capital Partners, a private firm which invests in clean energy, energy efficiency and environmental finance sectors.  At the heart of his address was the message that the preservation of the Earth's natural resources is largely in the hands of the business sector.  Fink challenged attendees to face the state of our depleting resources, and consider the change that we as business leaders may affect in the way of energy and environmentally sustainable business practices and ventures.

In the afternoon, attendees sat in on two of six 75-minute panel discussions on the topics of Energy Efficiency Services, Green Building, Capitalizing on Massachusetts Cleantech Cluster Growth, Renewables, Venture Capitalism and Green Entrepreneurship.  "The panel discussion was insightful and relevant.  The speakers got right to the heart of the challenges facing "green" venture capitalism and their various experiences and perspectives really came through in conversation.  I learned a lot," remarked a VC panel attendee.

For the remaining two hours, Olin Hall buzzed with activity, as students and professionals mingled over hors d'oeuvres and networked with Cleantech exhibitors.  "This annual event became the largest student-run cleantech conference in the country, reflecting our students' passion and Babson's commitment to sustainability," remarked BEEC Co-President, Kyle Hunker.  "Next year's BEEC leadership is carrying this momentum forward and will only build upon E3 2008's success."

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The Babson Energy and Environmental Club is a student led organization at the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business.  The club works to foster innovation by hosting educational events, connecting alumni to the club and its members, and helping students gain new employment opportunities within the energy industry.  For information, visit www.babsonenergy.com. 

A team of ten graduate students from the F.W. Olin Graduate School of Business at Babson College recently participated in and won the 2008 Duke MBA Games. The Duke MBA Games is a fundraising effort organized by Duke University's Fuqua School of Business to support Special Olympics North Carolina. This was the second time Babson participated in the event, which was held on the weekend of April 4th-April 6th, 2008.   It was also the 20th anniversary of the Games.

Sail(Proud) Apparel, a student run sportswear company in Babson College's Undergraduate Hatchery Program has been awarded the right to create a signature line of official merchandise for this year's Founder's Day celebration. The decision comes from the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship in recognition of the arrival of Ernesto Bertarelli, a two time America's Cup champion and one of this year's ADE inductees. The apparel includes a Babson version of one of Sail(Proud)'s most popular products, their Regatta Polo. The polo will be complete with Babson Logo embellishment, Sail(Proud) embroidery, and built-in performance features.

As part of the agreement between Sail(Proud) and the Blank Center the polos will be retailed around campus for $25, with all profits being donated back to the Undergraduate Hatchery Program to support the several entrepreneurial endeavors currently being executed there. Both the Blank Center and Sail(Proud) have agreed on a limited nature of the sales event, with only 200 polos being created--and each with a specially designed "printed" tag to remember the event and limited nature of the product. Phil Tepfer, Sail(Proud)'s CEO commented: We at SP are very happy that the Blank Center decided to partner with us on this event. This Founder's Day marks an important global turn in Babson's focus of the ADE, and with Mr. Bertarelli's visit it was only fitting that we try and help celebrate the event. Having a chance to give back to the hatchery program, which has been a crucial part of our growth over the last year and a half, is an immense opportunity to help foster entrepreneurship on campus and declare the student body's pride of Babson's entrepreneurial spirit. And yes, these polos are going to go fast.

About Sail(Proud)

Sail(Proud) Apparel is the liberating force for the millions of sailors and nautical enthusiasts around the country that longingly crave a way to keep sailing alive all the time. To do this, the company has worked to develop its own line of transitional apparel—that is, comfortable clothing designed to be worn everywhere: the boat, the boardroom, or even the bar. Gone are the days of having to change out of sweaty cotton tees, or peeling off "shrinkwrapped" performance shirts. Sail(Proud) makes clothing that fits a sailor's lifestyle, which, while constantly looking forward to time on the boat, often requires other activities and distractions. The company's core offering revolves around the idea of transitional lifestyle apparel, or clothing that feels and performs great with any kind of use. Sail(Proud)'s products are truly transitional in design, fabric choice, and manufacturing. Nearly all are designed with performance-enhancing benefits, while remaining comfortable and fashionable. The company utilizes fabrics that are lightweight and quick drying, soft and durable. The company has partnered with the Heart of Sailing Foundation, an organization that helps children with developmental disabilities learn to sail. This amazing program uses sailing as a means of education and recreational therapy. To help, Sail(Proud) has agreed to engage in profit sharing as well as logo placement on several of their most popular products.  Visit www.sailproud.com.

Dean Fritz Fleishmann (center) was among the speakers at today's groundbreaking for the Babson Wind Turbine.

"On May 24, 1844, Samuel Morse sent the first public telegraph message from the old Supreme Court Chamber in the Capitol building in Washington, DC, to his co-inventor Alfred Vail in Baltimore. The message was "What hath God wrought" - a piece of Biblical text from the Book of Numbers (23:23) that is nowadays translated as "See what God has done!" Today, if we were to use similarly old-fashioned language (the King James Bible was created in the early 17^th century), we might ask, "What hath Man wrought" - what have we done, through our ceaseless ingenuity, ambition, and hunger, to change the planet we have inherited?

Of course, some still deny that we have a problem or, if we do, that we have anything to do with it. Global warming, they say, is not our fault; it just came upon us.

Fault or not: it is certainly our problem, and the environmental crisis is the most significant challenge of our age. We are subjected to a daily litany of worrisome news: another large piece of the Antarctic ice shield is breaking off; glaciers are melting; climate zones are moving. The habitability of the world's regions is changing. Failed harvests, a shortage of drinking water, a rising of the sea level will lead to large migrations. The planet's carbon sinks (oceans, permafrost regions, and tropical rainforests) are filling up or disappearing, while rapid industrialization is putting more greenhouse gases into the air. The fact is: global warming is already here. The only question is: how fast will it progress? Are we doing things to speed it along or slow it down? Given that somebody or something "hath wrought" this, what ability do we have to deal with this crisis? 

What can we do? What should we do?

We can do what Babson College is known for: create and collaborate, seize opportunities and marshal resources. In other words, engage in entrepreneurial behavior. But in addition, we can engage the entrepreneurial drive differently: not just in the spirit of economic individualism but for a common good. Those two are not mutually exclusive, to begin with: enlightened self-interest is simply a deeper, longer-term understanding of personal self-interest. Global warming is a phenomenon that no one individual can run away from, and it is a threat that no one individual can fight single-handedly. It takes all of us to confront it and to deal with it.

I welcome this wind turbine as an example of Babson's entrepreneurial spirit, of our ability as a community to create and collaborate, to live in the real world, and to turn a crisis into an opportunity. I welcome it as a manifestation of the same human urge that has led our ancestors to cover this planet with cities and towns, with roads and airports, with factories and shopping malls, with hospitals and universities. This is the human urge to achieve and create. But the Babson wind turbine also represents our ability to get things done together, and to articulate a common goal. This is the human urge to be part of a community that protects us against the unknown. Our wind turbine represents hope: we are not helpless; we have agency; there are things we can do. It represents optimism, an essential feature of the entrepreneurial spirit and of American business in general. Henry David Thoreau had this in mind when he wroteabout commerce as an antidote to passivity and fear. "Every path but your own is the path of fate," he says and praises business for "its enterprise and bravery": "It does not clasp its hands and pray to Jupiter," but it is "confident and serene, alert, adventurous, and unwearied." It is always concerned with facing what is real and with creating new realities. Human beings, in Thoreau's words, need "to live deliberately, to front ... the essential facts of life." In one of his most famous lines at the end of Walden, he reminds us: "Only that day dawns to which we are awake."

Being awake. Dreaming. Wind turbines. Wind mills. For me, as a scholar of literature, the most famous name associated with windmills is also a famous dreamer: Don Quijote, a literary character created by Miguel de Cervantes right around the time of the King James Bible (the first decade of the 17^th century). You may remember: Don Quixote gets on his high horse, puts down his lance and makes a run at a group of windmills that he mistakes for giants - hence our figure of speech, "tilting at windmills." Don Quijote has read too many romance novels; he is a dreamer and a denier of reality. Don Quijote would probably be a denier of global warming, too.

Entrepreneurs may also be dreamers, but they are perceptive realists, and they create realities that inspire. Let the Babson wind turbine be such a reality, a symbol of what we can and need to do. Let us be awake, then, and work together, so that we may be proud of what our generation "hath wrought": a future filled not with distress and despair, but with opportunity and hope.

Thank you."