With a little help from friends, a budding New Mexico economy could be around the bend.

For years, local businesses, venture-capital firms and technology research corporations have relied on licenses, government subsidies and grants to function. According to Mark Montgomery, founder and CEO of a semantic software platform called Kyield, local economic success depends on cooperation between local and global businesses, not government grants.

On his blog, New Mexico Analytics Cluster, Montgomery is paving the way for the local community of professionals pushing the advancement of industries working with data. With New Mexico's potential in related fields, life sciences, clean energy and analytics, Montgomery says there is no reason why New Mexico shouldn't be one of the leading states in the country in science and technology development.

"Most regions have all kinds of untapped potential that they're not using," Montgomery said, "and that's the low-hanging fruit. And in two-and-a-half years here I can see it everywhere, isolated companies with a lot of strength not even talking to each other."

So, Montgomery is laying down the bricks to create New Mexico's first major cluster. A cluster, as Montgomery describes it on his blog, is a regional community within an industry that works together synergistically to advance common interests such as economic development and new jobs.

"Grants don't create activity, it's the relationships between the entrepreneurs and the customers that does," Montgomery said.

In essence, a cluster is a giant web of networking connections aimed at improvement in human capital, even among competing companies, so that the community as a whole can prosper.

New Mexico has been notorious for its lack of communication between industries and for interference from government officials, Montgomery said. He has witnessed the strengths of the Los Alamos National Laboratory and of companies as Mesa
Analytics and Computing in New Mexico, but cringes at the amount of cooperation between them and potential customers in the state.

That is why he says so many companies with global potential leave the state for greener pastures in California or the East Coast.

"If you really want to succeed and scale something, then you have to relocate to those markets," Montgomery said, adding that New Mexico and other "fly-over" states are suffering because of their lack of human infrastructure where they originate.

Montgomery was heavily involved in a similar venture in Arizona a few years ago. He tried to establish a cluster that would benefit the state and its people by linking the strong research done at places like Arizona State University with entrepreneurs that could form a business plan to patent unique, local ideas. But he said his mistake in this early venture was that he didn't include enough participation from the local economy. Most of his clients were global companies.

"The core of a successful cluster is a successful public," Montgomery said. "It's usually one that has stayed local, and management is involved in
mentoring other successful companies."

He said spinoffs from organizations at LANL are what really benefit the public. But the key to maintaining a cluster is to map and maintain the connections that develop between companies and spinoff companies. If those networks are maintained, then mutual interests can be discussed and contracts can even be signed that benefit both.

Montgomery says New Mexico, and even the United States, are years behind places such as Germany, India and China when it comes to forming mutually beneficial clusters.

He hopes that within a year, his contacts with the state and local start-up companies in clean technology, research and information technologies can form a unit solid enough to start planning cluster "boot camps" and seminars across New Mexico.

"My guess is there are a whole lot more people involved in related clusters than we even know about," Montgomery said.

He hopes that through prospering relationships with businesses around New Mexico, he can start seeing the seedlings of a unified cluster.

"A cluster works because of civic pride, caring about your neighbor, and the need to be competitive in the region," he said.

Once a strong cluster has formed and has become sustainable, it has the potential to reach "critical mass" when it offers competitive products and services to global industries.

To learn more about Montgomery's New Mexico cluster, visit his blog at http://kyield.wordpress.com/.