MaineBusiness.com

This week I had the distinct privilege of hearing Doug Hall at a program sponsored by the Maine Center for Creativity (disclosure: I am a member of that organization's board of directors).

Hall is a typical Mainer – independent-minded, stubborn and enormously practical. He's a cut-to-the-chase, impatient-with-pretense, clear-thinking engineer and entrepreneur. He comes from a long line of similarly constituted people, and like several of Maine's best and brightest, he left the state to seek fame and fortune in Cincinnati.

No, really. Such emigres to Ohio are everywhere. One from Machias is a member of my book club in York, and another from Presque Isle was instrumental in making Tom's of Maine the success it became.

And, also like many of Maine's best and brightest, Hall achieved both fame and fortune. He has founded successful companies, published award-winning books, hosted radio and TV shows and has been the subject of glowing stories in The Wall Street Journal and on national news shows.

Today he runs Eureka Ranch, an innovation lab outside Cincinnati that helps clients across the world dream up new products and improve their operational procedures. He's a world renowned innovation guru.

But unlike most such success stories, Hall hasn't waited until retirement to return to the home he loves. Though still based in Ohio, he has returned to his alma mater – the University of Maine – to establish the Innovation Engineering program.

Dedicated to the proposition that creativity isn't the exclusive preserve of eccentric geniuses and starving artists, Hall's new program is open to any student "interested in learning a systematic approach to creativity." His courses are designed to help students "develop, refine, communicate and successfully implement new ideas."

With the emotional fervor of a crystal palace evangelist and the glib motivational one-liners of a late-night infomercial pitchman, Hall touts the scientific, data-based, empirically validated qualities of his approach to creativity.

An avowed capitalist, he is motivated by his love for Maine and a deep-seated conviction that nothing short of a revolution of creativity and innovation will save his beloved home state from the economic and demographic death spiral it is slipping ever closer to entering.

He shouts what I've been quietly arguing in these pages for years.

With typical understatement, Hall says Innovation Engineering should never be a major, but that 80 percent of University of Maine graduates should leave with this skill set and attitude as their minor.

This is perhaps his most important message – that creativity and innovation are for everyone. This message should be carried to every school in the state and should be the central criterion for divvying up our annual multi-billon dollar investment in K-12 education.

But Mainers should not be the only audience getting this message. Hall's underlying theme and the reason for his initiative at the university is that the qualities necessary for a successful innovator – independent thinking, a practical, experience-based respect for the hard facts of external reality and a pig-headed stubbornness – are exactly the qualities common to many traditional Maine folks. That is certainly true, but we can't stop there.

Those wishing to help Maine avoid the death spiral must also convey this same message to the world at large. Maine is a great place to be an entrepreneur. If you're an independent-thinking, empirically-based, stubborn entrepreneur, Maine is the place for you. We welcome you.

Learn your lessons at Eureka Ranch in Cincinnati, then come here. We've got a great place to start and grow your business and a great place to start and grow your family.

We want you here because, even if you weren't lucky enough to be born here and even if you talk funny, underneath it all, you're really just like us. You might not know it yet, but this is your home.

If Maine can build that reputation, our future will be so bright we'll have to wear shades.

Charles Lawton is senior economist for Planning Decisions, a public policy research firm. He can be reached at:

clawton@maine.rr.com