The Front Lines

Midwest MicroSystems, a homebased software development firm in Ainsworth, Nebraska, recently became the eighth Cornhusker-state small business ever to win a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. The $55,000 SBIR grant will be used to explore the feasibility of creating a telework model in rural communities.

"People in the city can usually find a job, particularly in Nebraska, because unemployment is so low, but if you're living 30 to 40 miles from a town with a population of 2,000, you don't have that opportunity," says Jim Lowe, founder of Midwest MicroSystems, which began in 1993 with a ranch management software program. Lowe plans to create a database of rural people interested in telework and companies that may have jobs for them.

This article was originally published in the September 1997 print edition of Entrepreneur with the headline: The Front Lines.