>> 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.