Former rivals develop a bond

Two Spokane groups that once viewed each other as bitter rivals are now sharing clients and working together to help boost the region’s economy, directors for Sirti and Connect Northwest say.

Three years ago, Connect Northwest was an experimental program launched by the Inland Northwest Technology Education Center (INTEC). INTEC at that point was a state-funded economic development group that ran into opposition by some who saw it as unneeded and redundant.

In particular, former Sirti Executive Director Patrick Tam did not hide his dislike for INTEC, a newer group than Sirti and one that had received a healthy infusion of state money for its first two years of operation.

Sirti, also funded by state dollars, had the goal of helping young technology firms develop commercially successful new products.

Tam and then INTEC CEO Lewis Rumpler argued several times over which group deserved continuing state support, said Bill Kalivas, who worked for INTEC until Connect Northwest took flight as a stand-alone entity in 2006.

Today, INTEC is defunct after losing its state financial support last year. Connect Northwest has become its own nonprofit economic development agency, working on helping young companies get professional help and financial backing. It has a budget of $350,000, most of that contributed by Spokane County.

And Tam, who resigned from Sirti in 2004 after employees accused him of heavy-handed management, has been replaced by Kim Zentz.

“The big change that made the difference was new leadership,” Kalivas said this week, the official one-year anniversary of Connect Northwest’s incorporation.

Zentz, who joined Sirti early in 2005, agrees that the new era between Connect Northwest and Sirti has been marked by cooperation and mutual support.

“When I took this job, I insisted on that (effort toward reconciliation),” she said. “The way I see it, the cooperation we provide makes the total pie (for helping young companies grow) much bigger,” Zentz said.

Kalivas notes that not only are relations better between the groups, but both Connect Northwest and a second INTEC spinoff, the Institute for Systems Medicine, now lease office space in the Sirti Technology Center on the Riverpoint campus in downtown Spokane.

Kalivas acknowledges the tension between the groups three years ago stemmed in part from INTEC’s directors changing the group’s focus and not explaining its mission correctly.

Formed in 2001 as a nonprofit group focused on work force training, INTEC later added technology growth and entrepreneurial support as extra goals. But some directors of Sirti, which was founded in 1994 and charged with technology growth as one of its key missions, considered INTEC an interloper, said Kalivas.

Kalivas said Tam in 2003 told a group of community leaders that everything Connect Northwest was trying to do was already being done by Sirti.

On other occasions, Tam had told community backers that the two groups were trying to accomplish overlapping goals and that one of them was not needed.

Over the past 18 months, both Connect Northwest and Sirti have focused on clarifying each group’s skills and strengths, Zentz said. Zentz said she agreed to serve on the Connect Northwest board of directors, to help with that cooperation.

Both groups are focused on helping young or startup companies grow and prosper. But Sirti’s primary clients are firms that need assistance with business plans and market analysis, Zentz said.

Connect Northwest, which patterns itself after a similar venture based in San Diego, creates a network of specialists, such as lawyers and accountants, who volunteer to help companies with specific issues, said Kalivas.

Now, “we send (Sirti) companies that they can help with, and they do the same for us,” Kalivas said. One Post Falls startup Connect Northwest helped direct to Sirti is Ascension Snowboards, Inc., a new company manufacturing custom snowboards.

Sirti’s other major efforts include a new technology growth fund and office space in its main building available for new companies. Its annual budget is $1.4 million.

“When things changed between us,” added Kalivas, “it was like the end of the Cold War. It was the U.S. and Russia talking to each other again.”