Connect Northwest hopes to mirror San Diego success

Connect Northwest, an outgrowth of the pioneering San Diego Connect program, has captured another outgrowth: Dennis Leidall, the former program manager for that city’s Center for Commercialization of Advanced Technology.

Leidall says he sees a lot of similarities between the potential of San Diego in the early 1980s and Spokane today, right down to the economic sectors — software, life sciences and telecommunications — that have become the foundations for the California city’s remarkable growth during the last two decades.

Add early-stage capital and a network for fostering new ideas and entrepreneurs, and that same success is possible here, he says.

“I see nothing but opportunity,” says Leidall, who in May joined Connect Northwest as program manager. Connect Northwest, with Bill Kalivas as chief executive officer, was spun off INTEC, the job-training and economic development group that lost its funding.

The Center for the Commercialization of Advanced Technology, or CCAT, is a collaborative that includes the University of California at San Diego and Lockheed Martin, the giant defense contractor. CCAT was formed to fast track technology from concept to commercialization in the private sector or under the U.S. Department of Defense, which provided the organization’s funding.

Leidall says Connect Northwest hopes to replicate that model by pulling together the research and development resources at Washington State University, Pacific Northwest National Laboratories at Hanford and, possibly, the Spokane Intercollegiate Research and Technology Institute, and putting new ideas together with public and private sector funding.

Leidall says he has already prepared a Power Point presentation on the proposed new coalition, and is almost finished with a White Paper for Rep. Cathy McMorris and senators Maria Cantwell and Patty Murray intended to help secure federal money.

Washington’s newly created Life Sciences Fund could be another source of money.

“We need to grow early-stage capital,” says Leidall, who has locked on to a longstanding complaint of area entrepreneurs.

He says Connect Northwest has almost finalized an agreement with the Delta Angel Group that will make Connect responsible for coordinating the activities of that somewhat informal investment group, as well as vetting the companies that want to make presentations.

The scrutiny will be intense, Leidall says. “It’s critical that Delta have some early successes.”

Although angel investors usually prefer to keep their money close to home, Leidall says he can put Spokane-area entrepreneurs with promising technology in front of San Diego investors if that works.

Leidall himself has a degree in biology from the University of Iowa, which he put to work as a medical equipment sales representative in Southern California. First though, he spent a few years in Sandpoint, where he indulged his passion for outdoor pursuits — he’s backpacked around the world.

In California, he learned the coffee-roasting business from a roommate. That, and a connection with a former college buddy, led to the opening of a retail and wholesale coffee business in Chicago in 1992. The Newport Coffee House in suburban Bannockburn catered to an exclusive clientele that included Chicago Bulls basketball icons like Michael Jordan and coach Phil Jackson. Leidall says the business achieved seven years of quarter-to-quarter revenue growth, eventually reaching $500,000 annually. But an expiring lease and a yearning to return to Southern California in 2000 compelled him to sell.

Leidall says he learned how to get by on groceries bought with a credit card while getting Newport going. “Struggle is what it takes to be an entrepreneur,” he says.

He put the proceeds from the sale of Newport into a home in San Diego. He volunteered his services at Connect because he wanted to work with a startup company. Instead, he was hired to run Springboard, a coaching and mentoring program.

That kind of nurturing can double the chances a young business will survive, Leidall says. “We help them crystallize their ideas.”

Although individuals like Itronix Chief Executive Officer Tom Turner and John Pariseau of WIN Partners LLC are already sharing their expertise, Leidall says he hopes to get more area executives to participate.

Leidall says the community should also consider recruitment of a top research scientist who can attract the money and talent to support new industry. The approach is much like that taken by the Georgia Research Alliance, a coalition of six universities that pools state and private money to recruit “eminent scholars” whose research becomes the foundation for new industry.

But recruitment is the responsibility of other community business groups.

“Connect Northwest is not an economic development organization,” Leidall says. “That’s a byproduct of what we do.”

If what San Diego has achieved is byproduct, bring it on.