Missoula News

Montana Economic Development Summit

Summit Focuses on Trade, Opportunity for Montana’s Economy

By Courtney Lowery, 4-30-07

Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates address the crowd at the Montana Economic Development Summit via satellite while Sen. Max Baucus looks on. Photo by Barrett Kaiser, courtesy of Sen. Baucus' office.

A crowd of more than 2,000 people in Butte Monday heard that opportunities abound overseas for Montana businesses—it’s just a matter of seizing them.

“Don’t let the opportunity go past you,” said Frederico A. Humbert, the Ambassador of Panama. Humbert was one of seven foreign ambassadors on the first panel at the Montana Economic Development Summit—a statewide conference sponsored by Sen. Max Baucus.

Largely, the theme here all morning has been encouraging international trade and economic development in the state, but the feeling expands past just that. To get a picture of the energy here, know that so far nearly everyone on stage has said the word “opportunity” at least twice—even keynote speaker Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates.

When Gates took the “stage”—via satellite—his main focus was developing technology and how it will help with education and thus, economic development.

“The opportunity here … is pretty incredible,” Gates said.

It’s “a very exciting era in software,” he said, but more than that, the Internet is transforming the way we learn and teach and compete in a global market.

Closest to home, Gates said he sees opportunity for Montana in what he called “the shifting energy paradigm.”

Geo-thermal, wind power and clean-coal technologies, he said, will be “interesting opportunities” for Montana in the coming years.

Clean coal—and carbon sequestration, were on the mind of Chinese Ambassador Zhou Wenzhong as well.

“Energy and environment,” as he put it, are two places where China and the United States can cooperate.

“You have very good clean-technology,” he said. “This is where we can work very closely in the future.”

China is working toward a large-scale FutureGen zero-emissions fossil-fuel plant and has plans for 20-30 new nuclear power plants in the very near future, Wenzhong said.

Bahrain Ambassador Naser M. Y. Al Belooshi said from his perspective, he would like Montana—and the U.S.—to spend more time figuring out ways to tap into a booming middle eastern market.

Soybeans, for example, he said, should be introduced to Bahrain and other middle eastern markets—and how about more sheep farming to help supply the region with the ever-popular lamb meat?

It’s a matter of exploring these markets, getting to know them and then going after them, the ambassadors said.

“Those are opportunities are there—don’t be afraid of them,” Hambert said.

After hearing from the ambassadors from Bahrain, Chile, China, Indonesia and Panama the crowd met five Montana business leaders who are, in fact, “seizing” the markets beyond state and national borders.

“They are a model—in fact, an inspiration—of how ‘Made in Montana’ can conquer the world,” moderator Demetrios Marantis said of the panelists.

To his left was Scott Billadeau, who talked about his Missoula-grown Liquid Planet and Planetary Design and how Planetary Design’s high-end travel mugs opened doors for him to world markets.

“Creativity and innovation know no borders,” Billadeau said.

Then, there was Wayne Koepke, the CFO of Enell, a Havre company that has made an international success out of sturdy, well-made sports bras. Koepke, who joked that he is “one of the more knowledgeable men when it comes to sports bras,” said what got his company on the international stage was finding a niche and owning it.

It didn’t hurt either that the Enell bra (a favorite among central Montana girls on the basketball court—I know from experience) has been on the Today show twice, Sports Illustrated for Women, Oprah Magazine three times and the Oprah show twice.

Once the bra hit the Oprah show, the Enell warehouse sold out of six months of stock in two days. Today, the bras are sold in Germany, Austrailia, Canada, the UK and New Zealand just to name a few, Koepke said.

Greg Gianforte, the CEO of the Bozeman-based RightNow Technologies, perhaps the poster child of the idea of Montana’s “new economy,” stressed how the Internet has changed the way Montanans and Montana in general can do business. There, he said, is the biggest opportunity.

“Montana is an awesome place to do business…” he said. Today, he can do what he does—which is run a business that last year, brought in $100 million in revenue—just as well here as in Silicon Valley or the East Coast.

In fact, in ways, he can do it better, he said. The work ethic and the “caliber of people” here make it ripe for business and with the world quickly getting smaller, “Montana could be home to world-class businesses.”

This afternoon, we’ll hear from people on the ground on how to put all this opportunity to use and the close out the evening, we’ll hear from Terry McGraw, the Chairman and CEO of McGraw-Hill Companies as well as from Montana’s Junior Senator Jon Tester and Chairman Carl Venne of the Crow Tribal Council.

You can watch streaming video from the conference here. 

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