ICYMI: Senator Hassan Holds 7th Annual Innovate New Hampshire Forum
NEW HAMPSHIRE – U.S. Senator Maggie Hassan hosted her 7th annual Innovate New Hampshire Forum last week as part of her efforts to support New Hampshire’s entrepreneurs and ensure that they have the tools that they need to launch innovative businesses and thrive.
“As years go by and industries change, Granite Staters’ drive to innovate – that irrepressible, enterprising spirit of creativity and discovery – has always endured and is at the heart of everything that the entrepreneurs in this room do each and every day. So make no mistake: all of you – and business leaders all across the state – are the engine of our economic success and allow New Hampshire to punch far above its weight,” said Senator Hassan to kick off the forum. Senator Hassan went on to discuss how she will continue to work across party lines to protect innovation, including by pushing to restore the full and immediate R&D tax deduction.
Key excerpts from the panel discussion are below:
On building a strong workforce, Joe Whitten from Apparel Impact described how he has found success in building a strong team by hiring candidates from overlooked talent pools. Whitten said, “What I’ve found to be really helpful is that you find value in undervalued people… And so, I think for us… [that’s] literally how you’re going to grow your workforce. And if you give people a chance, what you’re going to end up finding is that they’re pretty dedicated to the company and you as a leader. They’re going to be willing to go above and beyond.”
Sylvia Dow discussed the approach of Visions for Creative Housing Solutions, which supports individuals who experience disabilities in finding housing and community support, and how it grew as a nonprofit: “So you start with a need, you know, whether it’s your own personal need or you see a need out in the community, that’s what we did… We really met some wonderful people along the way, not only families who wanted to help us and to support us, but also community members.”
On how businesses can innovate to promote sustainability, Keith Campbell from Life is Good shared how they adjusted their business model to reduce waste. Campbell said, “We’ve shifted our model to a print-on-demand model, which simply means we print it after we’ve sold it. And that’s special, and it’s dramatically reduced our inventory. While our business is growing, our inventory has reduced significantly. And we’re able to do that through innovating and technology.”
Jill Anderson from Tamworth Distillery spoke about innovative distilling approaches and local partnerships, and how they help local businesses such as Tamworth stand out in a highly competitive distilling industry: “When we started the company, it was really important to us that we served as a bit of a test kitchen. We wanted to be boundary-pushing… We’ve teamed up with the New Hampshire Cooperative Extension to figure out how to use invasive green crabs in our spirits, which was really remarkable. It allowed us to push past, you know, the walls of even New England and get some global recognition for the fact that, you know, we were using invasive green crabs in our spirits.”
On the benefits that would come from restoring the full research and development tax deduction, Hector Xu of Rotor Technologies shared how the tax deduction helps businesses like his startup: “Research and development is a big portion of what we do… So, I think the R&D [deduction], you know, which we take advantage of every year… it helps us attract the best talent to New Hampshire.”
Kristina Zontini of Super Secret Ice Cream discussed how small business collaboration can create great products with a unique story: “You could make ice cream taste like anything, it’s such a blank slate for creativity… We work with a really awesome maple sugar company called Mount Cabot Maple… and we realized we can use their maple sugar that’s not fine enough to sell… And so, we take their clumpy maple sugar and we replace all of our organic sugar in our ice cream base to make a maple ice cream. So, it’s a really nice way to reduce waste, support Morgan over at Mount Cabot Maple, and it tells a good story, and it makes really good ice cream.”
Andrea Hechavarria of NH Life Sciences discussed how New Hampshire is an emerging leader in the life sciences industry, and what we can expect to see in the future: “There’s so many companies across amazing industries that are on the cutting edge. The Live Free or Die mentality runs so deep within our life sciences community… What makes New Hampshire really attractive for these companies [is that] we’re really this beacon for businesses because of the business-friendly policies across the state – the low taxes, the access to the ecosystem, the camaraderie, and the collaboration that happens across our institutions.”
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