Two months into a new job at TEDCO, I was asked to write about one of the organization’s five core values: accountability, collaboration, integrity, respect, and stewardship. These principals are mission central and serve as a guide for the organization’s activities and initiatives. Excited by this opportunity, I immediately selected accountability. The timing of the request is perfect as we head into the new year and expanded opportunities for innovation. For when done right, rather than dragging down innovation, accountability can help inspire and ensure it. Accountability also creates trust and ultimately tells the story of how TEDCO achieves its mission.   
 
Many of us take the opportunity of a New Year to establish fresh resolutions but we often lose sight of those resolutions a few months down the road.  I believe that the combination of a New Year’s resolution (inspiration/innovation), combined with the right mix of stick-to-it-ness (accountability), can achieve incredible results.     
 
The global pandemic has been challenging and pushed people to look at things in new ways.  For me, one of the changes was an evolution in my career focus. With the backdrop of the pandemic and 20 years of professional experience in the Maryland banking and higher education sectors, I became increasingly interested in what fuels Maryland’s economic growth and creates economic opportunities for the State’s diverse population.  I learned that TEDCO is Maryland’s economic empowerment organization, and I was excited to join the impactful, dynamic TEDCO team as their new Chief Government Relations and Policy Officer. 
 
TEDCO serves Maryland’s entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem by providing investments, grants and wrap-around services to the State’s early-stage and startup businesses, which helps build great Maryland-based technology and life science companies. TEDCO also has a responsibility to create a more equitable entrepreneurial economy by providing investment opportunities and advisory services to not only create and sustain jobs, but also to expand wealth creation We are accountable for providing these services, and how we do so is key to establishing trust, growing our economy, and demonstrating success to our funders and the public.
 
Accountability as a core principle at TEDCO means: “We will do the right thing and have internal and external measures demonstrating that commitment.”  This core value keeps TEDCO true to its mission and leads directly to TEDCO’s mantra to “do well and do good.” TEDCO’s public mission is being accountable to many stakeholders, including the companies and individuals we serve, policymakers, institutional partners, the State, and the public.  TEDCO’s accountability focus was reinforced with the hiring of CEO Troy LeMaile-Stovall, who is about to celebrate his 18-month anniversary with TEDCO and who puts values like accountability at the center of his leadership.
 
On the broader stage, TEDCO is accountable to the Maryland General Assembly, the Governor, State agencies, and the public, through multiple quarterly and annual reports, as well as through economic impact studies, legislative audits, consistent review, and compliance with statute and policies. 
 
A common accountability saying is “What gets measured, gets done.” The original phrase goes back to the 1500’s, which originally meant “If you can measure it, you can manage it.”  Ruth Henderson, a contributor to Forbes, says this phrase means “measuring something gives you the information you need in order to make sure you actually achieve what you set out to do.” At TEDCO, accountability is core to improvement, learning from past results, and leveraging that knowledge to inspire innovation and drive change. 
 
The positive outcomes of this approach are evidenced in TEDCO’s recent economic impact study, conducted by the University of Baltimore’s Jacob France Institute.  This study found that TEDCO provided significant value to Maryland’s start-up community, supporting 10,433 jobs and more than $2.3 billion in statewide economic activity as of 2021. This substantial impact is the result of thoughtful tracking of where TEDCO has been, an evolving market and entrepreneurial needs, and holding ourselves accountable for leading TEDCO’s programmatic and performance innovation. 
 
TEDCO’s economic impact study is the very definition of accountability and measured success.  Armed with data, TEDCO has a powerful story to tell about the role we play in the State and the Maryland start-ups we serve.  As I start my new position with the organization, I plan to demonstrate to our elected leaders that you can trust TEDCO to achieve its mission and we’ve got the data to prove it— because accountability is in our DNA.

This is a contributed post from our silver sponsor, TEDCO. 

By Stephen Auvil '14, Chief Program Operations Officer, TEDCO
 
The last time I attended a symphony, I recall listening to the musicians warm up and tune their instruments just prior to the start of the concert – the crisp notes from the violins, the soft tones from the oboes, and the heavy percussion from the drums. Honestly, what I was hearing was more noise than what I would call music. I certainly recognized that each performer was uniquely talented and independently could produce beautiful music but listening to the collective group play in an uncoordinated fashion did not produce something pleasing to the ear. That said, I did not abandon my seat and leave the concert. I knew that the musicians would soon play together as a coordinated orchestra and generate a quality of sound more magnificent than any of the individual musicians could achieve by playing alone.   

This should not surprise anyone. Gestalt theory teaches us that a whole system taken together can have a greater value than the sum of values from its individual components. In my current role at TEDCO, I interact with various organizations supporting Maryland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem – the collective organizations and resources supporting entrepreneurs and early-stage companies in our state.  Like the individual musicians, each of these organizations and resources independently provides unique value to the ecosystem through advising, business incubation, funding, etc. That said, when I look at our ecosystem with a Gestalt perspective, I see an opportunity for much greater coordination – the opportunity to create a symphony of support. 

This is not just my perspective. In 2017, the State launched an initiative, Excel Maryland, to take advantage of the State’s strengths in cybersecurity and life sciences to advance its national leadership in these areas. The effort was to accelerate innovation-driven commercial activity. Two consultants were hired to examine Maryland’s ecosystem. The consultants were from Massachusetts, a state that has been very successful developing its life sciences economy. They found that Maryland had a wealth of resources; however, better connectivity between the various [resources] was needed to strengthen the State’s leadership. The challenge is finding a way to improve coordination of the various resources that we have available and elevate Maryland’s ecosystem as a whole.

Meeting this challenge will require individual stakeholders to look beyond themselves. To look beyond their individual or organizational metrics. To look beyond the personal credit that might be achieved through individual success. To take a Gestalt perspective and look at their role in the larger ecosystem and to appreciate the greater value and greater efficiency associated with collaborating with others in the ecosystem to raise the overall quality of support in our state.

At TEDCO, we are buying into this philosophy and leveraging Collaboration, one of our core values. To this end, we are currently supporting an effort by the Maryland Business Innovation Association (MBIA) to explore how Maryland’s various incubator and accelerator programs could be better coordinated and what value that could bring to the State. For example, this effort could help to standardize and collect metrics that will enable us to tell better stories of success, to attract investment to the State by creating a critical mass of funding opportunities available from all incubators across the State, and to better share resources so a company at one incubator can more easily access resources at another.

TEDCO is also part of an initiative called the Urban Business Innovation Initiative (UBII) focused on Baltimore City and Prince George’s County to support entrepreneurs in traditionally underserved communities. A group of 23 partners (thus far) are working together on this initiative. The UpSurge Baltimore effort is bringing together hundreds of ecosystem stakeholders to make Baltimore the country’s first Equitech city. The Small Business Administration (SBA) just closed its Community Navigator funding opportunity that required applicants to propose a hub and spoke model that involved the coordination of several partners within an ecosystem. These represent a few examples of efforts to “knit-together” parts of our ecosystem. We need more.

It is time for leaders in Maryland’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to put the greater good of the ecosystem’s success, beyond their own individual interests. They need to find new ways to collaborate with more stakeholders. As more individuals take on leadership roles and recognize the benefit of being proactive with uniting the ecosystem, Maryland can position itself to lead the country in innovation and technology-based economic development. The instruments are tuned, the warm-up is over, and it is time to make music.

This is a contributed post from our silver sponsor, TEDCO. 

By: Jody Sprinkle '17, Chief Government Relations & Policy Officer, the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO)

At TEDCO, we embrace the core value of stewardship every day in each of our programs.  It is our responsibility and privilege to manage the scarce resources entrusted to us by our public and private partners. As a quasi-public instrumentality of the State of Maryland, TEDCO incorporates stewardship into our mission to serve the State’s entrepreneurs in an efficient, effective, and fiscally responsible manner. 
 

​TEDCO provides a public service to the State’s entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystem by providing grants, investments, and wraparound services. Nothing is more fundamental to public service than the trust instilled by the citizens it serves. That trust is earned by the continuous and repeated demonstration of responsible stewardship of the public’s investment.    
 
More broadly, for TEDCO, stewardship means that we understand the impact of our resources and how we choose to deploy them. Our resources are deployed to maximize the benefit to Maryland entrepreneurs and to position Maryland for growth. Since its inception, TEDCO investments have led to the creation of over 7,800 direct jobs in Maryland. Under the Maryland Innovation Initiative alone, our portfolio companies have generated over $200 million in follow-on funding. TEDCO has made over 400 investments from our Seed Fund in Maryland start-ups. In total, TEDCO has generated over $1.6 billion in economic impact for the State.
 
However, having core values means that we cannot let successes lead to complacency. Good stewardship also means openness to stakeholder input. It means that we are caretakers of the relationships with our collaborators in the ecosystem. We use that stewardship to strengthen the dialogue with our partners to evolve our programs to be more responsive to the challenges in a modern economy. We build on that stewardship to cultivate a reputation for an unfailing dedication to our mission. 
 
When we demonstrate trustworthy, ethical, consistent, and responsive stewardship, we are afforded the confidence and the space to lead in new and pioneering ways. TEDCO is developing innovative approaches to entrepreneur development because of its proven track record of responsible and productive investment. This is increasingly vital as Maryland continues to address a new generation of rapidly changing technologies, such as artificial intelligence, quantum computing, robotics, biotechnology, clean energy, and blue technology, etc. This challenge is compounded by new realities of changing workplace dynamics and a long overdue reckoning with income and wealth disparities. 
 
TEDCO is embracing its leadership role by facing these challenges with new programming and re-energized partnerships. With the Department of Commerce and the University System of Maryland, TEDCO has launched the Maryland Entrepreneur Hub, an AI assisted portal that matches Maryland entrepreneurs with the best and most appropriate resources in the State. Under the Builder Fund, TEDCO has introduced its first Entrepreneur-in-Residence to guide early-stage companies that are owned by socially and economically disadvantaged founders to meet critical milestones toward growth. To address the economic impact of the pandemic, and with the partnership of the Governor and the Maryland General Assembly, TEDCO launched the Rural and Underserved Business Recovery from Impact of COVID-19 (RUBRIC) Grant Program and the Agriculture and Rural Rebuild (ARR) Challenge.  
 
The benefits of stewardship do not only lie in the accumulation of trust, but in the flexibility to find new methods to address modern challenges. TEDCO earns its freedom to innovate by embracing its role as a steward of a public mission. TEDCO will continue to use its stewardship to lead innovation to market.  

This is a contributed post from our silver sponsor, TEDCO. ​

By: Arti Santhanam '21, PhD, Executive Director of the Maryland Innovation Initiative at the Maryland Technology Development Corporation (TEDCO)
 
When I was asked to write about TEDCO’s core value of collaboration, the word that immediately came to mind was “ubuntu.” Ubuntu is a Zulu word that Archbishop Desmond Tutu defined as “My humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in what is yours.” In the simplest terms, ubuntu means, “I am because we are.”
 
Scholars of African studies and philosophy state that ubuntu is actually an intentionally vague term, similar to the Sanskrit word “namaste” (which loosely translates to “the divine light within me bows to the divine light within you”). Like namaste, ubuntu is much more than just a word—it’s a philosophy, a world view, and a framework for how we relate to and work with others.
 
While the concept of ubuntu has spiritual connotations, it has practical applications as well. As a socio-economic ideology, ubuntu encourages equity and equality as a means of generating shared wealth, promotes collective responsibility for the greater good, and fosters appreciation for each individual’s unique talents.  
 
At TEDCO, ubuntu manifests itself primarily in our core value of collaboration: “We focus on building trust and credibility across the organization and with our customers. We are transparent in the exchange of ideas and our encouragement of one another. We value teamwork in our pursuit of supporting innovation and entrepreneurial excellence.” Driven by this value, we embody ubuntu both internally and in our service to Maryland’s diverse entrepreneurial community. 
 
Collaboration serves as the foundation upon which TEDCO has helped build the state’s thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem since our founding in 1998. Over the last 22 years, our team has tapped into the power of partnership to identify opportunities to strengthen the state’s economy, provide valuable resources to entrepreneurs, and cultivate an environment that is open to innovation, creativity, and diversity. Without this group of like-minded, passionate people working together toward shared goals, TEDCO simply wouldn’t exist—and the state’s entrepreneurial ecosystem would be nothing more than a great idea.
 
TEDCO has worked hard to knit together an entrepreneurial ecosystem that connects like-minded entrepreneurs, subject matter experts, academics, legislators, and business leaders from all corners of the state. Together, we have woven in diversity of thought, variety of skills, and myriad needs of our citizens to build a vibrant tech-based entrepreneurial community that’s consistently ranked in the top five in the United States.
 
A tangible example of successful collaboration in the spirit of ubuntu is the Maryland Innovation Initiative (MII), which brings together universities—public and private, large and small—with the goal of leveling the playing field for technology commercialization. While equality doesn’t always lead to equity (we certainly have more work to be done in this area), we have embraced the ubuntu principles of community and collaboration to significantly impact the entrepreneurial cultures at Maryland’s universities. Collectively through this program, we have de-risked over 250 technologies, created 100 startups and attracted over $530 billion in investments.
 
During challenging times such as the ones we are living in now, it’s more important than ever to embrace ubuntu in spirit and in practice. Through collaboration, we can overcome challenges, find solutions, and empower Maryland’s entrepreneurs to transform their ideas into vital businesses that will expand wealth and improve quality of life for our state’s residents and beyond.  

This is a contributed post from our silver sponsor, TEDCO. 

By: Tammi Thomas '18; Vice President, Marketing & Communications, TEDCO

Aretha Franklin famously sang, “R-E-S-P-E-C-T; find out what it means to me!” The song earned her two Grammy awards, was inducted in the Grammy Hall of Fame and the Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry, and ranked number five on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.”
 
What makes the song so popular and, well, respected? In addition to being catchy and memorable, its lyrics speak to a universally recognized value: We all want respect—and we all know that to get respect, we must also give it. 
 
Yet getting and giving respect can be difficult to put into practice consistently. Many organizations include respect in their values, but without considering its true meaning and what it takes to “walk the walk.” True respect can’t be in name only—it has to be authentic to be effective.
 
At TEDCO, our commitment to respect is reflected in our core values: “We uphold a culture of respect at work, within our communities, and nationally. We embrace diversity and value our employees for their individuality and the unique perspectives that they bring to the organization.”
 
But respect at TEDCO is much more than words on paper. The TEDCO team represents a group of passionate people from different nationalities and backgrounds who are leaders in technology, life sciences, and commercialization. It’s because of this diversity—not in spite of it—and our mutual respect for each other’s unique perspectives and expertise that we can achieve our collective mission.
 
Not only is diversity important to TEDCO’s culture, we know that it also fuels Maryland’s thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem. There’s a large body of evidence to support the connection between diversity and innovation. According to research summarized in Forbes, companies with above-average diversity produced a greater proportion of revenue from innovation (45% of total) than from companies with below average diversity (26%). This 19% innovation-related advantage translated into overall better financial performance. Clearly, organizations that value and respect differences outperform their peers.
 
TEDCO isn’t the only organization demonstrating a commitment to diversity, inclusion, and respect. Stanford University instituted a Respectful Workplace training that all new faculty, staff, postdocs and graduate students must take. Closer to home, Leadership Maryland trains business leaders from across the state to have crucial conversations in an environment of trust, respect, and civility.
 
One of the best ways that you can start demonstrating respect is to encourage dialogue among those with unique backgrounds and perspectives and then really listen. The gold nuggets of innovation can be found at the intersection of diverse viewpoints.
 
Respect is an important value to me personally and professionally. I believe in treating all people with respect and celebrating diverse points of view—and it’s incredibly rewarding to work with a group of people who feel the same. 

This is a contributed post from our silver sponsor, TEDCO. ​