Iconoculture founders Mary Meehan and Vickie Abrahamson have left their Minneapolis market research firm to start another, Panoramix Global. Their focus is projecting consumer trends in the G-20: 19 industrialized and emerging markets, plus the E.U. The partners note that the G-20 accounts for 90 percent of global gross national product.

Upsher-Smith Laboratories continues its push beyond making generic drugs and into the development of innovative drugs (see the November 2009 feature on Upsher-Smith at tcbmag.com). A new licensing agreement with London-based Proximagen Neuroscience allows Upsher-Smith to develop the drug Tonabersat, which has been tested for epilepsy and migraine.

Here’s the deal at the 701 Building in Minneapolis: New tenants who sign a minimum three-year lease by August 31 will pay first-year net rent of $5 per square foot—half the average rate otherwise. With downtown office space in a slump (the 701, at Seventh Street and Fourth Avenue South, is reportedly 60 percent leased), broker CB Richard Ellis says it’s taking a cue from the Subway that’s moved into the building by offering its own “$5 footlong.”

Is Pocket Hercules morphing into a beverage maker? The Minneapolis brand and advertising agency that brought you Lakemaid Beer now brings you Tiny Footprint Coffee (tinyfootprintcoffee.com), “the world’s first carbon-negative coffee.” For each pound sold, Pocket Hercules pays to plant rainforest in Ecuador—enough to suck up 54 pounds of carbon, which it says is 50 more than it takes to make a pound of coffee.