Steve Arms is a great personification of the Vermont Innovator.

I met Steve when we were both students at the College of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences at UVM. As an engineering student, Steve was always asking questions. He was interested in building safer ski bindings, which in turn led him to try to figure out how to measure strain on knee ligaments.

A few years later, while developing knee sensor implants for his master's thesis, Steve founded MicroStrain, Inc. in Williston.

He says, "In the late '90s, as MEMS (micro-electro-mechanical systems) sensors became increasingly available for sensing other parameters, such as acceleration, angular rate and low level magnetic fields, we employed them in concert with microprocessors to produce smart sensors.”

Today, MicroStrain makes tiny sensors that detect strain a wide range of applications, from knee implants to bridges, unmanned military vehicles to automobile engines. They’re making a smarter and safer world.

I saw Steve last month at an event that kicked off an exciting new project -- the Vermont Innovation Marketplace – that will help inventors and innovators connect and communicate with manufacturers and investors who are looking for new products to take to market. Vermont is one of only 5 states launch a “state” Marketplace, in advance of the rollout of the USA National Innovation Marketplace on April 20.

At MicroStrain, Steve is now working on tiny wireless sensors that will detect strain on the rotor blades of a wind turbine. He attended this event to learn how the Innovation Marketplace could help him get the technology to market faster.

The Vermont Manufacturing Extension Center (VMEC) [www.vmec.org], in partnership with the Vermont Technology Council [www.vttechcouncil.org], is leading this groundbreaking effort. These web-based marketplaces are designed to accelerate connections and communications between people and companies that have innovations with investors, contract manufacturers, and buyers (licensees) that need innovations.

The USA National Innovation Marketplace is a new service of the US Department of Commerce’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP), of which VMEC is an affiliate. The Planet Eureka! International Innovation Network, led by Eureka! Research International, a licensed partner of VMEC and the MEP, has developed the national and state marketplaces.

Small-to-medium size businesses, their owners and entrepreneurs are the foundation for jobs and economic development in our state. The Innovation Marketplace is tailor-made for Vermont-scale economic development.

However, as small companies know, it can be difficult to access the money, tools, and connections needed to turn innovations into business realities. The Vermont and USA Innovation Marketplaces helps accelerate innovation success through a combination of: 1) Business Translation, 2) Fair Market Valuation, and 3) Direct Access Publishing to Potential Acceleration Partners.

VMEC’s network of field experts will register Vermont companies’ Requests for Innovation and teach Vermont Innovators how to accelerate their odds of success using three tools:

• Merwyn Business Translation Workshops teach innovators how to turn their idea, technology or innovative product into a persuasive business proposition that investors, distributors and buyers can understand “in less than 60 seconds.”

• Merwyn Business Simulation provides an independent, third party projection of annual sales and fair market royalty rates for the innovation based on conservative, most likely, and aggressive probability assumptions. Advanced statistical modeling provides 20 sales forecasts based on a range of marketing investment and development scenarios.

• Direct Access Publishing on the worldwide web connects Vermont Innovators’ Business Simulation listings to the direct needs and requests of innovation accelerators.

The workshop where I saw Steve Arms kicked off the Vermont and National Innovation Marketplaces. Seventy-five people attended this “at capacity” event. Vermont Innovators from manufacturing and technology companies, UVM, and Invent Vermont learned how to translate their ideas into publishable business propositions.

Vermont has a culture of innovation that goes back to our earliest years. While the technology may have changed since Samuel Morey of Fairlee invented the first paddle wheel steamer in 1826, the same creative force drives innovators like Steve Arms today.

It’s that force that will lead our state and our nation out of the current economic downturn.

###

Visit www.PlanetEureka.com to take an Innovation Marketplace test drive. For more information, including workshop and webinar schedules, visit www.vmec.org or call VMEC at 802-728-1432.

Brian Dubie is Vermont’s Lieutenant Governor. E-mail his office at martha.hanson@state.vt.us, or visit www.ltgov.state.vt.us