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July 28, 2008 Newsworthy

Start-up space | Steve Bazinet is 
the new executive director of the Maine Center for Enterprise Development

PHOTO/DAVID A. RODGERS In the incubator: MCED Executive Director Steve Bazinet wants to be able to spend more time with the center's clients
By Taylor Smith


On a Monday afternoon in mid-July, the Maine Center for Enterprise Development is pretty quiet. The business incubator, which is housed at the University of Southern Maine’s Portland campus, is one big room dotted with dozens of cubicles donated a few years ago by Unum. On this day, most of those cubicles are vacant. Nobody’s using the big multi-function printer in the center of the cubes, and the patio tables that double as a break room are empty.â€&Copy;

This is not Steve Bazinet’s vision. â€&Copy;

Bazinet, the center’s new executive director, wants action. He wants entrepreneurs buzzing around the MCED’s home on the second floor of USM’s biosciences building. He wants them talking to one another and learning from each other. And, most importantly, he wants them to use him as a resource, to learn from his decades of real-world experience managing and evaluating companies. “There are people here that are going to be successes, and I want to be here for that,” says Bazinet. “I’m somebody who’s going to be in the trenches with them.”â€&Copy;

Bazinet, 45, has spent years in the trenches with a number of firms, from his family’s business, Creative Printed Solutions, a Bangor company that distributed customized business forms, to global financial firms such as Dun & Bradstreet and Putnam Investments, where he worked on investment banking projects and mergers and acquisitions. Most recently, Bazinet has worked as a management consultant with firms including Rangeley Lakes Resort and Portland-based Ubiq Imaging Solutions. (Ubiq was purchased earlier this year by Vermont-based SymQuest in a deal Bazinet says he helped broker.) And Bazinet sees his new gig at MCED as another consulting job. “I still consider myself a hired gun,” he says. â€&Copy;

But being a hired gun for roughly 20 start-up companies in industries ranging from aerospace to sports apparel has its challenges. To have the time to spend with those companies, Bazinet — who took over from former director John Ferland at the beginning of July — needs to fundamentally shift how the center is run. For years, MCED has funded its budget via a stream of annual handouts from corporate donors and state government — from the Department of Economic and Community Development to legislative disbursements. As a result, Bazinet says, his chief role is as a fundraiser and his secondary role is as an entrepreneurial advisor. “From a business perspective, is that the way I’d recommend running a business going forward? The answer is no,” he says.â€&Copy;

Bazinet wants those roles reversed, and to do that requires creating for the center what he calls a “sustainable business model” that doesn’t rely on the generosity of corporations and the Legislature. For example, rather than handouts, Bazinet wants companies to make investments in MCED because of what the center can offer, whether it’s the creation of jobs or a pipeline of well-trained workers in a particular industry. “I want to make the incubator something people want to be part of, not just something they write a check for,” he says.â€&Copy;

Meanwhile, Bazinet hopes to double the incubator’s client roster to roughly 40 companies and organizations, though he admits that’s a big job. Why? A simple problem of perception. The incubator, says Bazinet, is the “best-kept secret in southern Maine.” For monthly rents as low as $10 a square foot, clients get access to an array of services, from Internet access to conference space. And, the best perk of all: easy access to a full-time consultant. “These 20 clients are my interim management clients,” says Bazinet. “How can I use my resources and knowledge to help them?”

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