Rotary Program: 3/10/04

Program Chairperson: Darrell Maynard

Speaker: Mel White, Director of the Innovation and Commercialization Center - EKU

For the past 20 years Mel White has honed his skills in sales, marketing, and communication consultant executive. Most recently he started his own consulting firm - Decision Free Associates, as efficiency consultants helping clients with market strategies. He has also managed the sales and design departments for two trade-show exhibit manufacturers. He holds an MBA from the University of North Dakota, an MA from Miami University and holds a project management certification from Portland State University.

Mel has worked for the past 15 months as the Director of the Eastern Region of the Center for Development, Entrepreneurship and Technology, which encompasses 46 counties and is based at Eastern Kentucky University. His work deals directly with economic development as a result of people who are creative individuals that want to start their own business from an idea or concept that involves some form of technology. Using his expertise and resources, he helps these individuals with an assessment of their business potential, developing a business plan, and obtaining the start-up capital that they need to get the business started. Grants and loans are available for new businesses through state funding, investors, and other sources. Mel says the formula has four basic components: a great idea (that may give them an unfair advantage, like a patent), adequate capital (which provides the fuel to get the business started), some business talent (executive ability), and plain luck (which he interprets as good timing). In the past two years 119 applications have asked for 1.7 million dollars, of which 67 have been awarded in the amount of $ 600,000.00. Many of them have netted as much as 20% return on the investments. A few have brought much more, one as much as 90 times the amount invested. When the marketing is done and manufacturers are located in the state, everybody benefits as jobs are being created, tax revenues are being generated, and the result is a better economy. Some examples of companies that have been created by this method include Trav-Matix, located in Ashland, Ky., which is an internet site that gives information to travelers about restaurants, hotels, restrooms, gasoline prices and other points of interest at almost every exit on the major interstate highways all over the nation and DataHealth, a company that provides back-up technology for over one million medical professionals with their vital information to avoid it being lost due to computer failures. Mel stresses that this kind of work is certainly an investment in the future and encouraged all of us to investigate being a part of this by getting information on the Mountain Ingenuity Venture Club. Thanks, Mel, for a most informative program. Submitted by J. Morgan Chapman