Courtesy of Colorado Springs Regional Business Alliance

In 2012, Colorado Springs, Colorado leaders combined two local organizations, the Chamber of Commerce and the Economic Development Corporation, into one entity, the Colorado Springs Regional Business Alliance (RBA). Many are hoping this change will end cronyism and usher in a new era of meritocracy. Joe Raso, President and CEO of the RBA, was hired to merge these disparate entities due to his track record. He’s been lauded for his visionary, community-centric approach to business relations and economic issues.

In a richly informative interview I recently conducted with Raso, he clarified the progress, mission, and goals of the RBA. During our conversation, he expressed his frustration with many of his statements being politicized or taken out of context by local media. He also pinpointed one key problem we have between entities in the Colorado Springs business community, discussing how we put businesses into geopolitical “silos” so they cannot interact or communicate effectively. Raso’s eloquence and openness regarding the actual day-to-day operations of the RBA served as a refreshing contrast to the emotional responses so often encountered in local news stories.

——————

Deen: Since you began working with the Chamber of Commerce and Economic Development Corporation in May of 2012, what would you say are the RBA’s proudest accomplishments?

Raso: There are a number of things that could highlight the success of the organization as it became one back in February of last year, and I really want to look externally instead of internally since there have been a lot of organizational structural changes that are hugely important to the future of how we do the work that we’re doing. But that doesn’t sometimes have that “sexy” appeal of what our mission is as an organization.

Deen: Yes.

Raso: So I guess the best thing to do is give you some framework around what we’re focused on. We’re focused on really driving four leading components of business and economic development. The first is how we support the business community in our region, those thousand companies that are, every day, producing products and services that they’re selling nationally and globally. We define those as base sector companies. Those are the businesses that are bringing billions of dollars into our market place. When we reorganized, we wanted to make sure we had infrastructure in place to go out and serve those companies. And, again, that doesn’t sound very sexy, but really what it amounts to is meeting constantly with hundreds and hundreds of companies, finding out what their specific needs are, and then working to address those needs.

For example, we’ve probably done more than 250 interviews with businesses here, these base sector companies, and of those, there’s been probably around 30-35% that have had or required a specific issue to be addressed, [by either] us providing assistance or one of our partners. So the utility company might be addressing a transformer issue for a business that might be having some reliability concerns. A company may be challenged with recruiting people. For instance, Xerox announced they were going to be adding a few hundred jobs. So we ask, how do we help them to communicate in the marketplace so they can get those employees with the skill sets that they need.

Deen: Ah. I see.

Raso: Likewise, there’s a business development component, and we also assess how we go out to attract business into the marketplace. Just recently, we announced the attraction of a company called fuseSPORT, which is an Australian company that moved their international headquarters here. They’re in the sports economy, specifically a software development company in the sports economy. But we’ve also helped a number of local businesses. In fact, we’ll be making several announcements over the course of the next couple of months on some projects. I apologize I can’t tell you who they are yet.

Deen: Oh, I understand. No worries.

Raso: So we’re seeing a lot of project activity with companies looking out of the state at us, but it starts first and foremost with our existing businesses. I mentioned that there are four areas. That is one area of business development: Existing Industry and Attraction. The other is Defense Development because the defense industry is 1/3 of our economy. How are we helping them?

Deen: Definitely important.

Raso: Hugely important. So for example, we work closely with Ft. Carson and help to develop a rapport on the value of Fort Carson and its opportunities that was used by the Army as they started to look at restructuring of their forces, and that was kind of led in many ways through our office. We worked with a lot of legislative things at the state level. Are you familiar with an organization called PTAC?

Deen: No. Could you elaborate?

Raso: PTAC works in procurement and technical assistance for government contracts, state and federal. We helped to get them the funding they needed to continue to operate and support our businesses who want to do business with the government, both with the military and education, all government agencies.

Deen: Well, that’s awesome, actually.

Raso: Yeah, and it’s not like the wildest, coolest stuff, but it’s really the blocking and tackling that has to happen for you to support an economy.

Deen: Yes, well, our economy definitely needs to be supported. We need more tax revenues coming in. It sounds like you’re working to bring in those large businesses, and also military as well since they’re such a big part of our economy.

Raso: Yes. You said large businesses, and really, our focus and most of our attention, in fact, 80% of the companies we serve are businesses that are local. Many companies that are interested in maybe moving operations / headquarters here, are small businesses. Most of them have employment sizes of under 50 employees.

Google+

L Deen