A privately held engineering services firm, Creare began with the primary focus being to work in fluid dynamics serving the turbomachinery and nuclear industries. Later areas of interest expanded to include energy, aerospace, cryogenics, and materials. More recently, the firm has also been working in software and biomedical applications. Reflecting this diversity of interest, the scope of the SBIR-STTR funded work at Creare is very broad - beginning soon after passage of SBIR enabling legislation across all enagncies and continuing to present day. The firm has licensed vraious technologies to include high-torque threaded fasteners, a breast cancer surgery aid, corrosion preventative coverings, an electronic regulator for firefighters, and mass vaccination devices. Products and services developed at Creare include thermal-fluid modeling and testing, miniature vacuum pumps, fluid dynamics simulation software, network software for data exchange and, perhaps one of the most high profile of the firm's projects, the NCS Cryocooler used on the Hubble Space Telescope to restore the operation of the telescope's near-infrared imaging device. The business strategy of Creare management has been that of solving problems for clients and commercializing the firm's technologies through licensing or by establishing independent product companies. Creare-developed innovations have led to the creation of many spin-off organizations and new ventures. These include Hypertherm (now a world leader in plasma cutting products), Fluent (a leading CFD software vendor now owned by ANSYS, Inc.), Spectra (industrial ink jet printers, now part of FUJIFILM Dimatix), and Creonics (precision motion controllers, now owned by Rockwell Automation). Many early Creare spinoff have gone on the spin-off their own new ventures. One Creare spin-off is Edare providing manufacturing and product development services for transition of innovative technologies into low- and medium-volume production. These spin-offs now employ over 2200 people and generate $700M per year in revenue for their respective organizations.
