Back
in 1979, when Brian Brockway graduated from the University with a master’s
degree in electrical engineering, the last thing on his mind was starting a
company. Today he runs a business with 200 employees and annual sales of $25
million.
”Back then I wasn’t even interested in getting involved in business as a manager,” he said.
That changed after he went to work at Cardiac Pacemakers Inc. (CPI), now a division of Guidant.
”I started listening to people talk over lunch about certain decisions that were made, and I became curious about why things were being done,” he said. He started reading books by CEOs and entrepreneurs and became so intrigued with business that he left CPI to start his own company—Transoma Medical—in 1983, when he was only 29 years old.
”I was extremely naive," he said. ”At that age you think you’re invulnerable, that you can do anything, but it’s not so easy.”
Transoma (a Greek word meaning ”through the body”) manufactures wireless, implantable devices that help monitor the health of laboratory animals involved in drug safety research. The company is headquartered in Arden Hills, Minn.
Brockway’s success as an engineer-turned-CEO has made him something of a celebrity in the biomedical community, even landing him on the cover of the September 2004 issue of Minnesota Business magazine.
”For our type of business, Minnesota is hands-down the best place in the world to be,” he said. ”When technology and innovation are such a big piece of the business, you need to be where you can hire the best people, and there’s a great pool of talent in this area.”
Brockway’s current challenge is to adapt the monitoring technology so that it can help keep human heart-failure patients out of the hospital and emergency room. For example, a wireless pressure sensor implanted in a person’s heart could alert a physician to a dangerous change in blood pressure. The doctor could then intervene immediately, possibly with a solution as simple as telling the patient to take an extra half pill of diuretic (a drug commonly prescribed to eliminate excess fluid from the body). This activity would happen before the patient was aware that anything was wrong.
”It’s kind of like a guardian angel for a heart-failure patient,” he said.
FDA approval for the device would give Transoma access to an estimated $750 million market, in which his relatively small company would compete with medical-device giants like Medtronic or Guidant, where his wife is a scientist.
Brockway, the father of five children, grew up on a farm in southwestern Minnesota. His interest in technology dates back to fifth grade, when a friend gave him an electronics kit for his birthday.
”After the party I opened it up and immediately became fascinated with electronics,” he recalled. He also took up ham radio, building his own transmitters, antennas, and receivers whenever he wasn’t in school or helping out on the farm. He soon decided to be an electrical engineer when he grew up.
His three older brothers had attended the University, and Brockway saw no reason to break with tradition. But what really sold him was the University’s marching band. A trombone player in high school, he was truly dazzled when he visited campus and watched one of his brothers perform in a marching band roughly the size of his hometown.
He went on to march in the band for four years, until he completed a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering in 1975.
“The education I got at the U really wasn’t about circuits, electronics, or semiconductor physics,” Brockway said. ”It was really about important fundamentals—how to creatively come up with solutions to problems and how to learn things quickly.”
That’s what Brockway spends most of his time doing these days as Transoma’s CEO.
“From figuring out where the product line is going to caring for customers to dealing with a problem in HR, running a business is really all about creative problem solving,” Brockway said.
Obviously, this entrepreneur isn’t so naive anymore.
