Here’s Michael Tentnowski’s vision for the Chesapeake Innovation Center

Since accepting the job as executive director of the Chesapeake Innovation Center in Odenton and moving to Maryland from New Hampshire, Michael Tentnowski has been out meeting the tech community.
Tentnowski is not new to helping entrepreneurs, having worked at a number of incubators. Most recently, he helped open the Plymouth State University business incubator in Plymouth, N.H.

In his new job, he’s already touting the Anne Arundel County incubator’s connection to Fort Meade, and looking to start programs that knit Maryland’s tech community together.
“We’re really trying to be a regional player, because any economic development in the region connects to all of the economic development in the region,” he said.
Earlier this month, we met with Tentnowski at the CIC to hear more about his plans.
(Editor’s note: This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.)

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We’ve heard why you were chosen for the job, but what attracted you to the position?
First and foremost I like the strategic location and proximity to Fort Meade. My background is in the defense arena and Fort Meade certainly is going to be one our differentiating factors when we’re bringing businesses here. Also I like the clusters we’re interested in. Defense clusters in cyber and big data, and we do have some health IT. Those are all something I have previous experience in and something I have an interest in furthering along.
Secondarily, I’m here for family reasons. In the surrounding states and even in Maryland I have family members, so it worked out great for me.
What’s your background?
I’ve been in business incubation for 22 years. I’ve been involved in a number of technologies that included working with the national laboratories, mostly in things that I can’t openly discuss, but also rockets, missiles and explosives technologies. Then a lot of material science and UAV [unmanned aerial vehicles], as well. I’ve always been interested in those fields, and this opportunity allows me to further that interest.
Is that what you were doing in New Hampshire?
It’s a little longer than that. This is not my first incubator. I’ve been around the country. I’ve been out west, as well as the mid-Atlantic and New England regions.
Can you describe the incubator at Plymouth State University?
It was university based and it was brand new. I started that incubator two years ago, and there was a heavy focus on trying to do student companies. But we brought in a couple of defense companies to get that started. As a result, it worked out great for the students because they ended up interning at a lot of the companies that were there.
How do you envision Chesapeake Innovation Center growing?
It’s a brand-new facility. So the traction now is to try to get more companies as residents, but also expand our virtual membership. We do have cyber and health IT companies, and I’m going to use those as recruiting tools to help bring in other companies.
Part of my strategy is to partner with the other incubators, because we can’t be experts in every field that’s out there. We all have a different focus and we can be complementary to each other by doing referrals, and sharing resources and being able to match our own incubator companies with one another.
Do you feel like you have to build that relationship with Fort Meade?
That relationship already has been built upon with the Anne Arundel Economic Development Corporation. When this facility was located in Annapolis, there was already a very strong connection with the NSA among others. Several of the meetings I have over the next couple weeks are to further those relationships with the Fort Meade agencies.
NSA has met here on a number of occasions. On May 6, we had an NSA event here that drew more than 70 people. We also had the National Cybersecurity Center of Excellence here, and they did a program here that was very well attended.
We’re also serving as a meeting place. We have training and conference facilities, where we can assist those companies looking to meet “outside the fence.”
What are the levels of membership at the Chesapeake Innovation Center?
We have four currently, but we’re going to reduce it to three. We’ll have resident members, virtual members and collaborative members.
Resident has office space here and we can see them day-to-day and address their needs immediately. Virtual members want to be part of our programmatic services, and all of the matchmaking and events that we do, as well as access to accountants and legal assistance. They get access to that, but they’re not housed here. Then collaborative members come as needed and use our open space where it’s not an assigned office, and use this as a satellite office. All of those provide the same programmatic services.
Are you already recruiting?
Yes, we’re actively recruiting. We have room for about 12-15 companies depending on how much space they want to occupy, and currently we have several openings available.
Is there anything coming up that you want to tell us about?
Because of the proximity to the Fort and my past history in defense technologies, it’s near and dear to my heart to help the veterans in the area. There is a program called TechVets that was initiated two months ago that is sort of a gathering of tech veterans. It’s more of a happy hour right now, but it’s going to evolve into doing other things. We have a speaker at each event and we have a networking opportunity. It’s a mini-incubation model where we have like-minded individuals gathering around and sharing info and seeing how there could be some collaborative assistance.
At our very first event two months ago, one of the companies that was presenting was looking for employees. By the second event, the company ended up hiring two attendees from the very first event. It can’t work out any better than that.
How often is that event held?
Those will be once a month, then we’re going to try to do a larger event later in the fall.
The next TechVets meetup will be held June 23 at Houlihan’s in Columbia.