 The Maine Technology Institute is an industry-led, publicly funded, nonprofit corporation that provides funding for a wide range of companies throughout Maine that are developing innovative technologies to take to the marketplace. They are having an exciting new show here on CTN called Generation Innovation, which highlights the work of these cutting-edge businesses. Brian Knoblock spoke with MTI's president and the show's host, Betsy Beeman, about the program. Betsy, tell us about it. What is MTI? The Maine Technology Institute is a publicly funded, industry-led, nonprofit organization. What we do is to try to help build the innovation economy here in Maine to both create incentives for our companies to be more innovative and to be bringing new products to market so they can be growing and really very successful financially, as well as to be creating jobs and opportunity across the state as a result of that growth. What type of programs do you fund? Our primary program is the business innovation program, and that's a program that can fund a startup company or an existing company that has a new product idea, a new technology idea to start the development and then bring the development forward till it's ready to go to the market. Give us an example of what type of product that may or program that might be. A company might have an idea for a better-designed blueberry harvester, or it could be something that's extremely technical and sophisticated in the field of mass spectrometry. We really look to build on main strengths and the companies and the industries where we're strong and innovative and help companies really succeed in those industries and grow. Is the money targeted towards producing a product or a prototype? What kind of products? It can be all of the activities that are involved in developing a new technology and bring it to the market. So we really start with our tech start grants, which are for things like business planning, competitive analysis to understand is this really going to be a product or a technology that will succeed in the marketplace? It could be filing for a patent to protect your intellectual property, but then it moves on to research and development, testing and breaking things and seeing how would it really perform in the market. And finally, those final activities that you need to do to be prepared to sell a lot of units of that technology in the market in Maine or preferably around the United States and internationally. Is this just for big companies or for small companies? It's for both. You can be an innovator in your garage just starting a company or you can be a hundred year old textile company that's instead of going out of business like many other textile companies have really getting into high performance technologies that add a lot of value through our know how and our experience workforce in the textiles industry. You have a new show starting here on CTN called Generation Information. Tell us about that. Generation Innovation is a terrific show that is really going to showcase some of the success stories in Maine of companies and organizations that are on the cutting edge of technology across many areas of our traditional strengths in Maine, but also some of our emerging industries. And we get to see those companies every day, but your average person in Maine may not be aware of these companies and we think it's important that everyone know the exciting innovation that's taking place in Maine and to inspire the next generation of entrepreneurs and innovators to follow in their footsteps. What kind of information can the audience expect to learn? Well they'll be meeting with entrepreneurs who are leading research laboratories and private companies across the state, learning some of the lessons they've learned, understanding how those companies are growing and creating jobs and having a community impact that's well beyond the research or technology that they're producing as a company. You have a mailbag where people can send in questions to be answered. Yes. What's that? I'm hoping that as a result of seeing these companies and meeting these entrepreneurs that folks who are watching may have questions and we want an opportunity to not just be showcasing these success stories, but to hear the questions that folks in the audience have and to respond to that. So people will be able to email in their questions to questions at maintechnology.org and we'll respond to them in each monthly show. And when can people see generation innovation? People will be able to watch generation innovation Mondays at 7 and other times throughout the month as well as on video on demand at ctn5.org.