THE PRIVILEGE OF BEING ABLE TO HAVE DREAMS, IDEAS AND GOALS COME TO FRUITION, IS THE CORE OF WHAT WE ARE ABLE TO EXPERIENCE BECAUSE OF THE FREEDOMS THAT ARE OURS IN AMERICA.

- Denise Burnett Stewart

SMALL BUSINESS DRIVES THE AMERICAN ECONOMY. IT THRIVES AND SURVIVES NO MATTER WHAT MAY BE GOING ON IN THE MAIN ECONOMY.

- Dick Gadomski

UNLESS WE PROMOTE ENTREPRENEURSHIP, WE WILL NOT HAVE AN EXCITING BUSINESS ATMOSPHERE IN OUR COUNTRY.

- Allen B. Morgan, Jr.

James M. PHILLIPS

Pinnacle Enterprises
Founder
Entrepreneur

James M. Phillips has enjoyed an outstanding career starting companies and guiding them through successful IPO’s while bringing new technologies into industry-leading positions.

Phillips’ career began when he was asked to do research for his master’s thesis on an emerging company, Telecommunications System of America (TSA). TSA sold to Northern Telecom (Nortel) and Phillips stayed on, moving rapidly through the ranks to vice president. After Nortel, he was named president of National Satellite Paging, changed the company name to SkyTel, and created the nation’s largest messaging company.

Following SkyTel Phillips moved to Telular Corporation, selling a portion to Motorola when Telular went public. He remained with Motorola as Corporate VP and GM of Multimedia and PCS and participated in launching digital cellular and multimedia, bringing cable modem to the market.

“Suddenly I found myself right at the epicenter of the technology boom.” says Phillips. He was introduced to a company called IPIX, which produced photographic images with 360° navigable images. Phillips became Chairman and CEO of IPIX and took the company public.

While with IPIX, Phillips was approached by Willard Sparks and Fred Smith to build the FedEx Institute of Technology at the University of Memphis. Phillips resigned from IPIX in 2001 and moved to Memphis and spent 2 ½ years making the FedEx Institute of Technology a reality.

In 2004 Phillips was installed as CEO in residence at Morgan Keegan. He was asked to evaluate a technology called VeinViewer, named in 2004 by Time magazine as “one of the coolest medical inventions of the year”. Phillips quickly raised the capital to put VeinViewer into production. That was the beginning of what is now Luminetx Corporation. In 2008, following his career at Luminetx, Phillips became CEO of Pinnacle Investments.

Phillips serves on a number of boards including: Court Square Ventures, American Museum of Science and Energy, EmergeMemphis, Memphis Biotech Foundation, University of Memphis Board of Trustees, University of Memphis Fogelman School of Business and Economics, University of Memphis Herff College of Engineering, U.S. Council on Competitiveness, National Health Museum, Blue Cross, Blue Shield, Lokion corporation, Tennessee Technology Development Corporation, and is vice chairman of the Memphis Area Chamber of Commerce.

Year Business Founded:

2005

Year Inducted:

2006

Thoughts on Entrepreneurship:

“‘“Many confuse entrepreneur with being a good business person. While an entrepreneur must possess excellent business skills, it is also more. An entrepreneur must go where no one has gone before. One must be able to move invention to innovation, ideas to execution, and usually at enormous risk. An entrepreneur accepts a role that is defined as much by risk as reward, with calculated but very uncertain outcomes. The measure of an entrepreneur should not be in their attainment of wealth, but rather how they positively transformed their industry and community.””

For More Information: http://www.PinnacleEnterprises.com