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CENTRAL MAINE: Help wanted

Local businessmen looking for entrepreneurs with ideas to generate jobs

By Amy Calder acalder@mainetoday.com
Staff Writer

John Butera and Michael Duguay believe there's a better way to develop businesses and create jobs in central Maine.

They are creating a network of business, education, finance, municipal and nonprofit officials in Kennebec and Somerset counties with the goal of helping entrepreneurs become successful.

This Kennebec Valley Entrepreneurial Network will provide connections and resources, not only for people in business, but for those with ideas or desires to develop businesses.

In this new model, business growth and job creation would come from within a community, where existing resources are available, rather than from without.

"I really think that this is probably one of the most exciting things I've worked on in 20 years," Duguay said Monday. "It's a whole different way of thinking. It's ideas; it's innovation."

Duguay, director of development services for the City of Augusta, and Butera, executive director of the Central Maine Growth Council, are teaming up with Ken Young, executive director of Kennebec Valley Council of Governments, to build the network.

They said they will essentially act as staff for entrepreneurs, who will be the drivers of the system.

The conventional approach to economic development was successful in the past, but is becoming ineffective in today's changing business world, according to Butera and Duguay.

They suggest looking at the conventional method as a "top-down" approach where the three tenets of the system are business attraction, expansion and retention. The economic development system was built around programs and services controlled and provided to businesses by government agencies.

The reason the model is no longer effective is that the larger "commoditized" businesses that created wealth and jobs have been replaced by smaller, faster and more flexible businesses that typically are run by entrepreneurs, Duguay said.

Entrepreneurs need a different system in which to operate -- one that puts the entrepreneur in the middle, not at the bottom -- where they may draw on resources in the community when they need them, he said.

Butera, Duguay and Young have been working on the idea for about a year and now are ready to try it out.

"It's really Mike's brainchild," Butera said Monday at in his office at The Center in Waterville, where he met with Duguay. "It all came to the three of us as a sense that things have changed in economic development and we need to do things differently and approach things differently. The old models and old systems don't work."

On Sept. 9 and 23 at University of Maine in Augusta, and Colby College in Waterville, the Entrepreneurial Network will meet for the first time on an invitation-only basis to develop an advisory council of entrepreneurs.

Then in October, the network will be opened to anyone who wants to attend -- entrepreneurs, aspiring entrepreneurs, even those with ideas, are invited, according to Butera and Duguay.

They have set Oct. 25 as a tentative date for that event.

The goal is to help build an expanding network that promotes skill building and investment that will result in jobs and ultimately a stronger regional economy.

Young was on vacation and unavailable for comment Monday. Butera, who has worked in economic development 25 years, and Duguay, with 21 years in the field, described the current top-down economic development delivery system.

Business counselors, educators, economic development services, funding and workers are at the top of the model and are separated from the entrepreneurs at the bottom, by a "Great Divide."

With the new model, the entrepreneurs are in the center, as in the solar system, with those resources circling around them and working with them.

"We're essentially setting up this program with the entrepreneur determining what services they need, at what time," Duguay said.

With the conventional model, economic development advocates can not always become involved with a business at an early stage. Butera and Duguay said they often were called in to help businesses when they were in crisis situations, and by then, help is not likely possible.

Colby College's career center is also involved.

"They've been very active in trying to get involved in economic development," Butera said.

The new model is less than six years old and is used, but not widely, he said. Officials in northern Wisconsin where the unemployment rate was high launched an entrepreneurial system, and it has worked.

"Those entrepreneurs just feed off each other," Butera said.

He said he foresees a lot of partnerships forming in central Maine as well.

"If we can leave a legacy where there's a culture of entrepreneurship in the community and a buzzing about it, I think we've done our job," he said.

Amy Calder -- 861-9247

acalder@centralmaine.com