Business View Magazine - November 2016

122 Business View Magazine - November 2016 for utilities and for oil and gas and pipeline compa- nies,” she begins. “What this software does is take all of the different software platforms these companies have to use for locating things underground, managing resources, etc. - those dozens of different platforms that they have to utilize, and it puts them into a single interface that allows them to use an IPhone or an IPad. Everything is consolidated into that single platform. “Our second company is Colorado Clear,” Pollard con- tinues. “This company has patented a plastic replace- ment that is one hundred percent bio-degradable and recyclable. The bio-degradable portion is really excit- ing because this product will bio-degrade in a landfill environment in just a little over a year’s time. The first application is a soft-sided water container. It’s some- thing that you can throw in your backpack and it’s to- tally green. We believe this product is cutting-edge. You’re not going to have millions of plastic bottles sit- ting on the sides of the road for thousands of years. We also have a company that has developed a technol- ogy for the extraction of oil shale,” she adds. “Oil shale extraction has met with environmental concerns and this company has developed the technology that has taken ‘green’ to the nth degree. It does not use water, at all, in the process – it actually generates water. It’s something that will replace fracking. So, we’ve got a variety of these different companies that are as inno- vative as those I described.” Another criterion for a company to be qualified for Ru- ral Jumpstart, is that it works in some form or fash- ion with an institution of higher education. “The ratio- nale for that is a lot of times in rural communities like ours, we see our students graduating from our univer- sity and going to more urban areas for jobs,” Pollard opines. “This program pairs these students at universi- ties like Colorado Mesa University (CMU), here in our backyard, with businesses, so that they can get some ‘boots-on-the-ground’ experience with an internship or