A plan to guide growth and maturation of the region’s tech sector is being finalized.
Public/private economic development organization Orlando Economic Partnership on Dec. 8 announced it’s formulating a five-year strategic plan for the Orlando area’s innovation ecosystem. The plan is meant to foster the growth of technology-focused companies in the region and create new jobs.
Here are the key elements of the plan, as described by the OEP in a news release:
- Aligning the current technology regional economy and its players, sectors and investment
- Evaluating competing markets and incorporating the elements that made them successful or recognized as a leader into the Orlando ecosystem
- Gathering local company and investor input and developing targeted partnerships
- Solidifying Orlando’s unique positioning against competitor cities
- Developing and launching a unique tech brand, narrative and communications plan for the region’s innovation ecosystem
More details are not yet available. The specifics of the plan are still being finalized, and the OEP is not able to share more at this time, OEP spokesman Justin Braun told Orlando Inno.
The plan’s implementation will be overseen by a taskforce of local technology founders and executives. They include Sal Rehmetullah, founder of Orlando-based fintech firm Stax, and Harold Mills, CEO of Windermere-based technology and service sector investment firm VMD Ventures.
The plan’s development was led by David Adelson, who became the OEP’s executive director of innovation & technology in September. Orlando possesses “all the ingredients” to be a major U.S. tech hub, Adelson, who founded hospitality tech firm Intelity in Orlando 13 years ago, said in a prepared statement.
“By understanding our competitor cities and how they promoted success will allow us to focus on segmenting and evolving our sectors and shifting messaging around our tech community as one of the nation’s, if not the world’s, most fertile proving grounds for emerging tech and scaling innovative companies.”
A focus of the strategic plan is to boost the messaging and branding of metro Orlando’s innovation ecosystem. In fact, the OEP’s announcement states a goal of the plan is to “shift hospitality-centric perceptions of Orlando toward an emerging tech hub.”
Changing the narrative around Orlando away from the city only serving as a vacation destination was a point of emphasis during a previous Orlando Inno roundtable that featured many leaders in the region’s technology and startup communities. Luminar Technologies Inc. co-founder and Chief Technology Officer Jason Eichenholz said the region needs to get better at telling its story.
“We say that ‘We don't know the half of it,’ but we don't do a good job of telling people what the other half is.”
Such an initiative is important because significant growth in the local tech industry could transform Orlando’s economy by generating new high-wage jobs. The abundance of leisure and hospitality jobs in the region led to a slower economic recovery after the pandemic led to a dropoff in travel last year and is a reason Central Florida features many low-wage jobs.
Consider that 133,000 metro Orlando residents work in food preparation and service jobs, which pay an average annual wage of $26,260, and another 33,000 work in personal care and service occupations, which pay an average annual wage of $29,500, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
While metro Orlando’s technology workforce only stands at 43,340, those jobs pay an average annual wage of $89,000, according to a report by commercial real estate firm CBRE Group Inc.
Anyone interested in learning more or getting involved can reach out to Adelson at David.Adelson@Orlando.org.
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