>> My name is Kevin Bouley.
I am the president and CEO of the Research
and Advisory Services Firm,
Nerac, headquartered in Tolland.
We're a company that assists
companies throughout the world
with early-stage innovation
and ideation activities.
Clients generally approach us with challenge
problems or questions related to the nature
of the discovery, challenges that would
relate to its formulation or development
or those related to the market in
which they hoped to introduce it.
So our role is to assist in some
fundamental research that properly places
and identifies the areas where the
product can be introduced to the market.
It may involve performing an intellectual
property landscape assessment or other types
of market assessments or technology
assessments that allow the company
to make an informed decision about
the nature of their forward strategy.
It's an interesting mix of clientele.
You might gather that, because of the nature of
the work that we perform, these are companies
that engage in some form of R&D or
new product development activity.
They're primarily small to medium size
enterprises, those types of companies
that don't have the resources, either the
financial resources or the talent resources,
internal to the organization to perform the
tasks that Nerac performs without turning
to someone on the outside, like a Nerac, but
these are companies that you would recognize
in the marketplace today from the Fortune 1000
to small emerging high-tech start-ups that are
at the very earliest stage of their development.
You know, I don't think of my day
so much as a role or as a breakdown
so much as I regard it as an adventure.
Every day is an opportunity to engage
in some fairly interesting
discussions related to a client project.
I am surrounded by some of the
smartest people you'd ever want to meet.
These are individuals who have dual
degrees, many of them with master's degrees
or PhDs in varying fields of science and
engineering and, owing to the kind of work
that we perform, we're on the cutting edge
or the cusp of new technology being developed
and deployed in the marketplace today.
I tend to look at my role as one of
creating and communicating a strong vision
for the organization, empowering those
individuals that surround me with the authority
to execute on that vision and then I just want
to step to the side and watch the magic, really.