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COVER STORY <br />Problem solver <br />Spurred by giant heating bills, <br />`Sleep Number' bed inventor creates again <br />WHETHER IT'S DESIGNING a bener bed to cure <br />his insomnia or inventing acorn-buming stove to drastically <br />reduce his hearing bills, Twin Cities entrepreneur Bob Walk- <br />er is at his best when he's inventing new products and taking <br />them to market <br />Walkeris presidentandCEOofstarmpBixbyEnergySys- <br />tems Inc., a Brooklyn Park-based manufacturer of ahigh-effi- <br />ciency com-buming stove. Sales in fiscal year 2006 were $8.3 <br />million, and Walker says he expects revenue to reach $40 mil- <br />lion in 2007. <br />The stoves are in such high demand that he can hardly <br />keep them on dealers' shelves. To ramp up production, Bixby <br />moved to a new production facility in May that's almost six <br />rimes larger Chan its previous Rogers plant And he wants to <br />go much further. <br />In 2008, he plans to introduce a furnace that can heat <br />homes, power water hearers and air conditioners, and provide <br />electricity - a]] by burning biomass fuel pellets made from <br />agricultural, animal and human waste. <br />Walker says he has the proprietary technology to do it, and <br />his corn-buming stove is the first step in proving that his con- <br />cept works. He's confident that his biomass-fueled heating- <br />and-energy system will drastically cut consumers' fuel costs <br />and lessen America's dependency on foreign oil. <br />BY LIZ WOLF <br />photographs by john noltner <br />