When tech innovator Dave Keicher requested marketing and sales growth services from New Mexico Manufacturing Extension Partnership (New Mexico MEP), the nonprofit organization saw it as an opportunity to experiment. New Mexico MEP helps manufacturers increase their competitiveness and profitability by improving processes.

Keicher is vice president of Integrated Deposition Solutions (IDS), whose founder Marcelino Essien patented an aerosol printing technology that IDS calls NanoJet. Keicher helped develop the technology at Sandia National Laboratories and was an early investor in IDS.

The request from Keicher revealed a gap in the services that New Mexico MEP typically provides. Rather than relying strictly on its own Innovation Directors, New Mexico MEP contracted with “resource partners” to supplement its services.