High-tech company promotion has been my "game" since 1984. During my career as a foreign commercial service officer for the U.S. Department of Commerce, I worked in over two dozen countries with some of the world's top technologists in Europe and Asia. So when I was hired in autumn 2006 as director of the state's Office of Science and Technology (inside the Department of Economic Development or EDD), I felt I had found a home.

Little did I know that three years and three months later my position would be eliminated by the governor as one of 60 exempt employees for budget reasons (my salary was $65,000 a year). This is not a "sour grapes" article. I had three very productive years and served my state well. My comments are a first-person account of how we in New Mexico do high-tech promotion, and what we should be doing to recruit companies and create jobs, not how we should be adding or subtracting exempt employees (though I certainly have my own opinion on that subject).

There hadn't been a director in the Science and Technology Division at the EDD for six months, so I had a lot to do. I was anxious to get going and fortunate to work hand-in-hand with the governor's science adviser, Dr. Tom Bowles, a brilliant and affable man. Tom is the chief scientist at LANL and "on loan" to the governor's office as his science adviser. I think the cabinet secretary knew that we would re-energize the science and technology portfolio together and do great things.

We were both used to working in highly charged/high-expectations environments. Working for the governor (a former DOE Secretary who seemed to understand the value of high technology) was a good fit for us. Our first order of business was to prepare a comprehensive road map of science and technology investments and involvement in the state. We assembled more than a hundred volunteers from around the state to help us, and after nearly two years of work, we had prepared the most definitive work on science and technology that the state had ever seen (it can be downloaded from www.nmsciencetech.com).

In 2008, I saw the interest in New Mexico as a potential high-tech investment site grow rapidly. Part of it was due to the governor's run for president, but more was because of the groundbreaking research done at Sandia and Los Alamos, our White Sands Testing Facility, our three research universities and by the private sector.

This brings me to Economic Development — not the activity but the EDD, the department charged with helping recruit companies to New Mexico and stimulating job growth. It didn't take me long to realize that my Division of Science and Technology was a "stepchild" at the EDD. The "real" economic development work of the department is done by the community representatives and the program managers who manage the state's economic development programs and incentives. My portfolio and I were not on their radar screen. Neither was my budget nor salary (it remained flat for three years!).

The governor is an ambitious individual, and the right amount of ambition can spawn some good ideas. One of those is a initiative I worked on called the New Mexico Computing Applications Center. We needed a bigger and better lure to recruit companies here, so we chose the best high-tech tool we could find, a kind of Swiss Army Knife of high-tech tools: a supercomputer. Not only would it satisfy our own in-state needs for high-performance computing, but it would also earn money from selling comprehensive services to non-New Mexican companies in the digital imaging business, for example. The model is a sound one, but it requires a commitment from the state to keep it going through its start-up phase, which could extend five years or more.

This was a nontraditional economic development project, one the EDD could not have taken on. That's not the EDD's fault; it was never really set up to support science and technology or other activities like those of the State Film Office. Because it is so focused on its core job of getting on-the-ground economic development successes, complex, longer payback portfolios like our division's was basically left to fend for itself without much support.

The governor's office is not the absolute best or right place for these efforts, either. Science-based government-supported economic development is a tough nut to crack. Support decisions must be based on proven science and sound business projections. There are very few tangible near-term outcomes. Science and technology promotion is the consummate long-term investment, but it's one we MUST make if we are to compete and thrive in the high-tech marketplace. State government is best suited to take the lead on certain science and technology projects, however. One of those is the Green Grid.

The New Mexico Green Grid Initiative (NMGGI) was formed as a state initiative in part to take advantage of American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) funds to build out a new array of alternative energy technologies in the state and run them in micro-grids. The principal technology was solar, and it was thought that the state could be a prime contender for a Department of Energy grant. We spent the better part of a year working to develop a comprehensive grant proposal and submitted it on Aug. 26, 2009. We all had great hopes for a win. Unfortunately, we were not selected for a grant, but neither was any other Southwestern state! Strange that the two best places for modeling solar technology, Arizona and New Mexico, were left out. All is not fair in love and science nor in politics, I suspect. I mention the NMGGI as a prime example as how the state of New Mexico has aggressively sought opportunities to advance our high-tech companies and technologies. We must continue the fight, but we must learn to fight smarter, because billions of dollars are at stake.

Last summer, the state Legislature approved a bill that would enable the establishment of a Research Application Center. The RAC, which would be a clearinghouse and home to technology promotion for the state, is our best hope to promote the state's high-tech capabilities. It will help merge the various state government initiatives and department portfolios like those of the EDD into one location, centralizing our resources and saving the taxpayers money in the bargain. (Many states have gone this route and have enjoyed considerable success.) I worry that the current legislative session will not fund the RAC and thereby deal a body blow to our state's high-tech ambitions and force us to continue to do business as usual, which clearly doesn't work.

Without an ongoing state commitment to pursuing new inward high-tech investment, we will not grow fast enough. Our home-grown technology companies cannot provide our economy with enough jobs. To attract newcomer high-tech companies, we must work more closely with educational institutions to insure that the right commercial curricula is developed to educate those new high-tech workers. We will not achieve our goals to create a critical mass of specialized technologies on our own without those jobs and those out-of-state companies. We need them to help us diversify our economic base away from a dependency on government jobs. We must act now.

We must realize that true high-tech economic growth can only come from a strong public and private partnership where each side shoulders its own burden of the cost. We should resist the impulse to cut funds for the state's efforts in this area. Ask any successful company what they do when sales are down. They don't fire the salesmen or cut their budgets.

Stephan Helgesen is the CEO of his own consulting company, 2nd Opinion Marketing and Communications.