In January of 2020, Chrysa Theodore, VP of Community Relations, was invited to deliver a KEEN Talk at the 2020 KEEN National Conference.
KEEN is a national partnership of universities with the shared mission to educate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work. They realize science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) workers need more than just technical know-how; they also need to figure out how to create value for themselves and for others. In other words, they need to understand the business side of their contributions. An entrepreneurial mindset centers around three C’s: curiosity, connections and creating value. CRG looks for employees with such an entrepreneurial mindset.
CRG’s relationship with KEEN began when Chrysa was asked to participate in an industry panel at the 2019 KEEN National Conference. CRG was a natural fit because of the company’s testament to why an entrepreneurial mindset makes a difference. This mindset is critical to any CRG employee’s success. The university partners reacted positively to the 2019 industry panel and appreciated the industry perspective of the need and desire for entrepreneurial mindset in employees.
Chrysa was then invited to give a talk at the KEEN National conference in January, a video of which follows. Her talk focused on how CRG’s corporate culture enables its Level 5 leaders to serve customers’ needs. Level 5 leadership is a term coined by Jim Collins in his best-selling book, “Good to Great.” Level 5 leaders are humble and fearless, a combination of personal humility and professional will. CRG seeks Level 5 leadership in every employee.
CRG supports KEEN’s mission and the quality work developed by the partner universities. Read more about KEEN here.
According to Dr. Hood, “The growth we achieved in 2019 was the result of our team delivering strong technically, the addition of key strategic partners to support our efforts, and restructuring our government reimbursement rates so we can be competitive not just in R&D activities but also in production, technical services and in programs where we have large pass-through costs for key subcontractors.”
CRG CEO Dr. Patrick Hood said “This property has the space to expand our development and production capacity as well as plenty of acreage to build out a campus to support additional growth.” Once the new building is fully occupied, the Miamisburg site on Earl Boulevard will be used for composites development and manufacturing. 
CRG was among the honorees selected for the annual Best Places to Work awards for 2020. The company is now ranked with the best employers of our region. The awards are based on a survey of company employees regarding staff engagement, team effectiveness, manager effectiveness and other workplace best-practices. CRG was nominated within the medium-sized companies group (50-199 employees). A dinner announcing the winners will be held on March 19th.
Building its already substantial intellectual property portfolio, CRG and its affiliates were issued five new patents in 2019. These included:
Cornerstone Research Group’s Aerospace Systems Center (ASC), officially formed in January 2020, is focused on rapidly advancing state-of-the-art aerospace capabilities. Some of these capabilities include advanced aircraft design, concepts and optimization, electric propulsion technologies, rapid development and fielding and production. The center’s partnership with CRG’s Advanced Manufacturing Center gives them the capability to take advantage of advanced manufacturing techniques for agile and affordable aircraft development and production.