All the plans for improving Maine’s economic position nationally and internationally, and there have been a lot released lately, usually involve lowering corporate taxes or leveling the business playing field.
Catherine Renault, director of the state’s Office of Innovation, has another way. She calls it innovation economics, and, in many respects, it combines ideas from all political schools of thought.
“Innovation allows for growing the state of Maine without wrecking the place,” Renault said Friday morning during her keynote speech kicking off the first Accelerate Maine conference at Hollywood Slots in Bangor.
The key, she said, is investing in things that Maine already is good at rather than chasing what Renault called a “field of dreams.” That means targeting investments to grow existing companies that have the most growth potential. The conventional method of trying to go big and entice a large company to move some of its business to Maine hasn’t worked, Renault said.
Lower taxes and quality of life are both important, she said, but they are pieces of the puzzle — not the definitive answer.
Renault’s speech before about 40 conference attendees on Friday opened the two-day conference coordinated by Cintia Miranda, the brains behind Accelerate Maine.
Miranda, who founded and manages Pulse Marketing in Bangor, said her goal was to create a national-scale professional development event using local resources.
“Professional development is so important to businesses and to the state,” she said in a recent interview. “If you stay with the status quo, people are going to pass you. Some people are used to and comfortable with being stagnant, but we’re trying to challenge that.”
Aside from Renault, featured speakers Friday included representatives from Shipyard Brewing Co., who talked about successful branding; Betsy Biemann of Maine Technology Institute, who talked about finding alternative financing sources for a company’s research and development; and Habib Dagher of the University of Maine’s AEWC Advanced Structures & Composites Center, who talked about the vast potential of offshore wind investment in Maine.
Innovation that originated at Dagher’s lab in Orono, including the now-famous “Bridge in a Backpack,” has led to dozens of private sector jobs in Maine with more on the way. Dagher said offshore wind power, another area that the Advanced Structures & Composites Center has championed, has the same potential, only to an exponential degree.
“If we’re not part of the revolution, we’re going to miss the boat,” he said.
The two-day event continues through Saturday and, in all, attendees had the chance to choose from 50 individual sessions related to the areas of accounting and finance, business law, construction and real estate, health care, marketing and research and development.
Miranda said she hopes the conference becomes an annual event that builds each year. The 2010 Accelerate Maine event was sponsored in part by the Bangor Daily News, Cumulus Media, Bangor Metro and Bangor Hydro-Electric Co.