About Arrowhead Center
Our mission is to promote entrepreneurship and innovation, creating economic opportunity.
At Arrowhead, we help innovators, entrepreneurs, and small businesses at any stage start and grow through our services, resources, expertise, and connections. We are also the technology transfer and commercialization arm of NMSU, working with campus inventors and innovators to protect their work and ensure it reaches the broadest possible markets. While we are based at NMSU in Las Cruces, NM and are deeply engaged in our on-campus community, we also work with people across the state, providing advice, mentorship, education, and hands-on experiences to pioneer new technologies, businesses, and partnerships.
Meet the people who make it all happen
We’re Here to Help!
Who We’ve Helped
Some of Our Success Stories

NMSU’s AgSprint accelerator selects first participants
Date: 04/13/2017 Writer: Amanda Bradford, 575-646-1976, ambradfo@nmsu.edu Six promising startup companies that are developing technology in all areas of agriculture have been selected for a new accelerator program at New Mexico State University’s Arrowhead Center. The...

Company develops innovative wild horse feeding stations with help from NMSU’s Arrowhead Center
Date: 12/18/2017 Writer: Lauren Goldstein, 575-646-5069, poet@ad.nmsu.edu Roch Hart is a third-generation New Mexican with a deep, genuine appreciation for the land and its expansive mountains, desert and scrub, and the petroglyphs that adorn far reaches of the...

NMSU’s Arrowhead Center to send competitive entrepreneur to global summit
Date: 01/18/2018 Writer: Lauren Goldstein, 575-646-5069, poet@ad.nmsu.edu Arrowhead Center at New Mexico State University is sending one competitive entrepreneur to compete at the Global Agripreneurs Summit in Istanbul, Turkey, in April 2018. Arrowhead was selected as...

Arrowhead Center at NMSU selects seven companies for HealthSprint accelerator program
Date: 01/31/2018 Writer: Lauren Goldstein, 575-646-5069, poet@ad.nmsu.edu A diverse and visionary cohort of health industry entrepreneurs are about to begin the next phase of their startup journey in southern New Mexico. HealthSprint – a new health technology...
Arrowhead Center’s Regional Impact
Entrepreneurs Assisted
We empower people to explore, launch, and develop creative, timely products and businesses.
Million Dollars in Economic Impact
We are capitalizing on the exceptional research and ideas emerging at NMSU and throughout the region.
New Mexico Counties Served
By using a variety of platforms, Arrowhead can deliver entrepreneurial assistance anywhere in New Mexico.
Studio G Sites
Arrowhead Center teaches entrepreneurship through hands-on experiences state wide and helps you start your business.
What They Have to Say
The folks at Arrowhead have been extremely helpful in helping me move [my] startup forward. We still have a ways to go…I highly recommend working with the folks at Arrowhead Center.
Because I work in many of the different states that do these outreach programs, you folks here in New Mexico have an outstanding group of people.
Really easy to work with the staff, everyone is very friendly and super supportive throughout the process.
Arrowhead Center’s Values
Client Focus
Arrowhead Center’s clients must be our top priority and our primary focus. From our long-range planning to our day-to-day operations, our clients, their wellbeing, and their ultimate success must underpin all work. We must work together to ensure that we and our programs are adding value to our clients and their projects. Even when those projects are not successful in the moment, we must frame failures as learning experiences, pointing out how negotiating challenges is a natural and necessary part of the innovation/entrepreneurship pathway, positioning people for growth and future success. Our clients, their outcomes, and their journeys must guide all of our actions.
Shared Vision
While one of Arrowhead’s strengths is our diversity of programs, created to serve a broad range of clients and purposes, we are committed to working under a shared vision. Our mission is to promote entrepreneurship and innovation, creating economic opportunity. Each of our programs addresses and expresses this mission in very different ways, but we each work under the umbrella of Arrowhead Center, and by extension, of NMSU – serving the entrepreneurial needs of New Mexico’s diverse population through comprehensive programs of education, research, extension education, and public service. Each of our programs must feed into those larger missions.
We also bring to our organizational culture a sense of fun. As involved as we are in our work, we make time to enjoy ourselves in that work. We participate in group gatherings and activities that allow us to interact as friends, as well as co-workers. We also set to cultivate a sense of fun and enjoyment while working with our clients. This sense of community allows us to better enjoy our work and to better serve our clients.
Openness
Working in innovation and entrepreneurship is inherently challenging – even those individuals who are the most eager to tackle this kind of work may face significant obstacles in funding, time management, identifying the expertise they need to move forward, and an array of other areas. To mitigate these challenges, Arrowhead must be as open and accessible as possible, ensuring we are always a gateway to opportunity.
We must keep our processes as streamlined as possible, with all necessary resources easy to find and understand. We must be diligent in our communication, responding to requests promptly and reaching out to current and potential clients to maintain current connections and forge new ones. We must cultivate this same attitude with our partners, taking the lead on collaborative efforts to benefit all stakeholders.
Kindness
Arrowhead’s programs are focused on personal and regional innovation, entrepreneurship, and economic growth. While these efforts are driven by practical programming and operations, we must commit to delivering these with kindness and empathy. All innovators and entrepreneurs fill multiple roles and face numerous challenges; keeping in mind the time and energy they are putting into their projects and treating them with respect is essential. We strive to be on the same side of the table as our clients, serving as a member of their teams. Kindness is also key in dealing with our partners and collaborators. We are often over-extended, and must be considerate in our interactions and communication.
Creating winners vs. choosing winners
Arrowhead works with populations of people who often have little or no experience with entrepreneurship or innovation and may be facing extraordinary challenges as they pursue their projects or ventures. To that end, we are more often tasked with growing our own innovators and entrepreneurs, rather than simply identifying them within an existing pool. We must strive to see the potential in our clients and their ideas, and to help them shape themselves and their plans to the best possible advantage. We must work just as hard (or harder) with those who are facing the greatest obstacles to realize and extend their capabilities.
Creating lasting relationships
As Arrowhead moves from initiative to initiative and engages in multiple projects, we must work to create and maintain strong, meaningful relationships with our partners, and amongst ourselves. This is the only viable pathway to sustainable regional progress. Putting in the effort to create lasting relationships ensures that our partnerships will not simply serve short-lived purposes, but will be leveraged for future endeavors.
This same philosophy applies to our relationships with individual clients. We must strive to maintain productive interactions with our clients, particularly when they are struggling or are working on a project that may not be ready to advance at present. In this way, we can continue to work with these individuals as they navigate journeys that will eventually lead to success.
Perhaps of greatest importance are our internal relationships – those we build and sustain with one another. Without a strong sense of shared purpose, teamwork, and trust within the organization, we cannot maintain relationships with external partners. The empathy, openness, and kindness we grant to our clients and partners must first be extended to one another.