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It's not true that you must work 80-hour weeks, trash competitors and gouge your customers to get ahead in today's dog-eat-dog business world.

Rich Sheridan and his gang of computer programmers and high-tech anthropologists at Menlo Innovations in Ann Arbor, Mich., said.

They are dedicated to reinventing the workplace, for themselves and their clients, as a means to an even more ambitious goal: ''To end human suffering in the world as it relates to technology,'' says Sheridan, president and CEO of the software firm he founded with three partners in 2001.

Inside Menlo's offices above a coffee shop a few blocks from the University of Michigan's central campus, there are no walls.

No cubicles.

Nobody working long nights.

Nobody working weekends.

No offshoring of work to programmers in India or other countries.

And nobody telecommuting, sort of counterintuitive for a technology firm in the era of virtual offices.

And if a client is a cash-starved entrepreneurial startup - is there any other kind? - Menlo might just cut its usual rates for custom software by 50 percent in return for equity in the client's business or royalties from its products.

This radical-sounding departure from today's typical corporate culture isn't exactly a new idea. It's modeled mostly on inventor Thomas Edison's famous industrial laboratory in Menlo Park, N.J., from which Menlo Innovations draws its name. Edison built the original lab in 1876. His so-called invention factory was reconstructed in the 1920s from old pictures and some surviving original materials at the Henry Ford's Greenfield Village in Dearborn.

So far, Sheridan's belief that an innovative company could take root here in rust-belt Michigan - and teach others a process and methodology for innovation - appears to be succeeding even in today's trying economy.

Menlo employs 50 people today, up from around 30 two years ago, and expects to hire another 25 this year. Revenues hit $2 million in 2006, rose to $2.5 million in 2007 and are running 70 percent ahead of last year thus far in 2008, Sheridan said.

Menlo has made investments in 13 of its clients and has started to receive royalty checks from two of them. One firm where Menlo has an equity stake is Accuri Cytometers, a college spin-off that makes flow cytometers for cell analysis, used by life science researchers.

''We use Menlo as an extension of our organization. The relationship is unique in my business experience,'' said Jennifer Baird, president and CEO of Accuri, which was created in 2004 and began shipping its first product this year. Software developed by Menlo has made Accuri's cytometers much more affordable and easy-to-use than competing instruments, Baird said.

Menlo's workplace, which a reporter visited last week, is definitely different. But it's not very complicated. ''It's kind of like kindergarten,'' Sheridan said, sheepishly.

People work in pairs, two to a P.C., in a wide-open bullpen. Partners are changed every week, and a worker might be assigned to a different project from one week to the next. Nine projects, each with a code name such as Clementine or Ovis, to protect clients' confidentiality, were under way last week.

Working in pairs helps to improve accuracy; partners correct one another's mistakes. And writers of software code, just like writers and editors of newspaper columns, get stuck every so often - and the partners help each other get unstuck. Changing partners keeps people fresh, and moving from project to project helps to keep everyone at Menlo aware of what everyone else is doing.

Everything is about collaboration. Job applicants are even interviewed and tested in pairs and advised that they will be judged on how well they help their partner to get hired.

Menlo's so-called anthropologists shadow clients, closely watching every aspect of how they do their jobs, to help design friendly software and easy-to-use equipment. And the customer, rather than ordering software and seeing a final result many months later, comes in for a weekly ''show-and-tell'' on progress.

Every weekday morning at 10 a.m., in another kindergarten-like exercise, a bell sounds at Menlo and everyone present - workers, clients and visitors gather in a circle for a stand-up meeting.

A plastic Viking helmet is passed around. Every person or pair speaks as they take the helmet. They tell the group what they are working on, what problems they could use help with, what events or new client meetings are coming up.

The meeting ends when the Viking helmet completes its journey around the circle. Uncannily, it almost always takes about 13 minutes.

''Most companies couldn't even get a meeting started in 13 minutes,'' Sheridan said.

About 10 percent of Menlo's revenues come not from creating software, but from teaching others about its culture and agile development process.

Most who come in for a daylong course are Menlo software clients, but anyone can walk in off the street and pay $675 for the experience.

AAA Life Insurance of Livonia doesn't buy software from Menlo, but Matt Scully, director of business and technology solutions for AAA, adopted Menlo's methods in his 75-person department last year.

The show-and-tell meetings ''have engaged our business partners in marketing, finance and other AAA departments as never before. There are no surprises,'' Scully said.

He does have a daily stand-up meeting at 9:30 a.m., but no helmet to pass around. ''One day we used a plastic replica of the Stanley Cup,'' he said.

Not everything about Menlo's methods is easy to swallow. Scully said his top management at AAA bought in, but the rank-and-file workers were reluctant to give up cubicles.

''You lose privacy. You're sitting closer together. It's a challenge. We're not done yet. We're only at end of the first quarter of the game, but we're winning,'' Scully said.

Dan Mulhern, husband of Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm and chair of the state's Next Great Companies project, which brings innovative firms together to share strategies, said Menlo ''brings a revolutionary common sense to empower and unleash employees to innovate.''

That's one way to say it.

Keep things simple like kindergarten, is another.

Either way, Menlo is growing and investing in other promising companies.