New London — Consultants brought in to analyze the region's economic potential said Friday that many of the best opportunities here will be in fostering a culture of innovation and collaboration.

Ben Haggard and Bill Reid, principals in the Santa Fe-based Regenesis Group, told a group of about 35 meeting in the Harris Place conference center that some of this work already is being done. As an example, Haggard pointed to efforts last summer to stitch together some of the region's historic attractions and then tie them together with a water taxi to create "a world-class site."

"It's not about creating great big, huge, monumental structures," Haggard said during a two-hour presentation. "It's about linking small entities to create something much larger."

Haggard said the region should consider its place halfway between Boston and New York as an opportunity "to provide something unique that serves them both."

The Regenesis Group presentation was its first draft of New London and Groton's "Story of Place," an effort to leverage the region's geography and history as a way of thinking about new economic opportunities.

The consultants were hired as part of the region's Thames River Innovation Places initiative to develop a plan to boost entrepreneurship in the region, in hopes of earning several hundred thousand dollars of state support to back specific projects.

"It's like a sketch that everyone gets to work on and improve," Haggard said of the initial ideas outlined Friday.

Haggard said each region's "Story of Place" starts with its natural history, and the geography of the Thames River area is unique. For one, it was formed out of massive glacial movements, he said; for another, it was originally a relatively small continent geologists came to call Avalonia, a place caught at one time between North America and Africa that disappeared in the tectonic shifts ages ago.

The result is a jagged coastline and complex "mosaics of ecosystems" stacked on top of one another — different worlds essentially side by side, he said. Interestingly, the geography of the region laid down centuries ago largely has been emulated in the diverse towns, boroughs and villages dotting southeastern Connecticut, Haggard added.

"Every city is different; every place is different," Reid said. "This is a process of understanding this is a living being, a living organism."

The region's geography gives it certain advantages, Haggard said, especially its deepwater port. The New London area originally was conceived as a global center for alchemy — a forerunner of chemistry and medicinal research — before being converted into a whaling capital and submarine powerhouse.

New London was a wild port city — "the New Orleans of New England," as Haggard branded it — drawing people from all over the world. It was perhaps one of the most diverse cities in America during its heyday, he said, and still has many different cultures represented.

There's a sense in New London, Haggard said, that people can get things done and that they can invent new ways of doing things. There's also a tendency, he said, of "continuous differentiating" in the region — that you can travel just a little ways and be in an entirely different place, or that people themselves are continuously reinventing themselves.

"The minute something gets settled, you start to break it apart again," Haggard said.

This, he said, can be a strength, but it also can create conflict. That's why it's so important for the region to work together to create what he called "a critical mass" of activities and interests tied together by weaving threads into an experience.

Despite its size, he said, New London can be much bigger than its 30,000 or so population might indicate.

"This is a global power, and yet it doesn't seem to know it's a global power," he said of the New London and Groton area.

Hannah Gant, a leader of both the Spark Makerspace cooperative in downtown and the Thames River Innovation Places initiative, said she sees New London as a kind of campus in which shared resources can make the whole much stronger than any individual part.

Haggard said he sees the region as a place where people can coalesce around aims that go beyond personal agendas, pointing out the area's role in the discovery of Antarctica. Capt. Nathaniel Palmer of Stonington is credited with being one of the first to sight the vast southern continent.

Tammy Daugherty, director of the city's Office of Development and Planning, said the Regenesis Group ideas fit in well with what the Thames River Heritage Park is planning for the summer, including ghost tours, history tours, Segway rides, the water taxi and storytelling through Flock Theater and other groups.

"This is a process; it is not an answer," Haggard concluded.

l.howard@theday.com