US Secretary of Commerce Gary Locke visited Cambridge Innovation Center yesterday.  Secretary Locke was in Kendall Square for a series of events focused on stimulating innovation in the US economy, including a town hall event at Genzyme’s headquarters around the corner from CIC.

As part of the CIC tour he visited several CIC client companies including ThingMagic, Hubspot, and Zeer, showing off their RFID reader, inbound marketing, and food allergy-related offerings.  His plans also included visiting the Fall River coal gasification plant of Cambridge-based (and initially CIC-based) Great Point Energy earlier that morning, although a delayed flight meant he couldn’t make that part of the trip.

Secretary Locke used the occasion of the luncheon at CIC to highlight some of his priorities as he enters office, including what he termed a major redesign of the patent system.  He pointed out that mounting numbers of pending patents are creating unacceptable uncertainty that harms business.  In describing the planned changes he said “this is not a tweak or an adjustment” but rather a complete restructuring from the ground up.  Stay tuned.

In a lighter moment, the intrepid Hubspot team graded the Commerce Department’s website (it got a 95.8 on their website grader–I guess an A), and then surprised the Secretary’s entourage as we turned a corner into their rec room.  Arrayed against a wall was nearly the entire company staff, ready for a mass group photograph with the Secretary.  Go Hubspot!  This called to mind a similar scene when Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick visited CIC earlier this year.  Hubspot was not on the itinerary set by the Governor’s advance team, but after a concerted onslaught of tweets, apparently they convinced the Governor’s team that he should make an unscheduled visit, where he was greeted with the same ready-for-a-group-photo crowd.

Secretary Locke made a point of engaging with everyone around him, at one point chatting at length with Kristi Nichols, our staff member who manages events, asking her about her background, schooling and so forth.  He came across as down-to-earth, describing for instance how, upon his recent arrival in Washington, D.C., he and his family slept in sleeping bags on the floor while awaiting for all their stuff to arrive.  It is no surprise that Gary Locke has done well in public life.

Many thanks to Ted Carr, head of the Massachusetts Office of International Trade and Investment, who arranged the visit and set up a luncheon at CIC for business leaders prior to the town hall gathering.