Orlando Tech Community, which until now has operated under Orlando Economic Partnership, will leave the area’s public/private economic development organization for a new nonprofit spinoff dubbed Innovate Orlando.
Innovate Orlando filed its articles of incorporation on Feb. 24 and officially starts work this week.
David Adelson, former chief innovation officer with Orlando Economic Partnership, will be CEO. “We're not selling a product. We're not selling a service. We're selling a destination of technology and innovation. If you peel it back, we're basically community builders. We are telling the world what this community is in hopes that they learn so much about it that they want to relocate their businesses here or they want to grow their businesses here.”
Bottom line, Innovate Orlando is charged with growing Orlando’s tech economy, and the mandate comes from within: “I'm an entrepreneur,” said Adelson. "I started my business, I sold my company. So with Innovate Orlando, I'm treating this like a business, and to do that, there has to be a plan to execute upon. My business today is Orlando. Orlando is the name of my company."
An annual budget has not been announced, nor has Adelson's salary.
Adelson first made his mark in the tech sector from 2008 to 2020 as a founder and C-level leader at Saas company Intelity, a global guest experience and management platform for the hospitality industry.
“When Orlando Economic Partnership made the big jump of hiring David, I personally could tell this guy was going to disrupt some things — and I mean disruption in a positive way,” said Paul Sohl, CEO of the Florida High Tech Corridor, a regional economic development organization for the high-tech industry.
To compete with tech hubs like Austin, Texas; Seattle and Charlotte, North Carolina, successfully uniting tech resources in the area is key, Sohl said, describing a current scenario where “tech organizations, support organizations, clubs, all wonderful in their professional mission, are not necessarily coordinating with one another and not really understanding one another. This isn't about creating something new. This is about knitting things together and building that foundation from which we can grow.”
Sohl noted that independence from the competing priorities of a larger entity often allows for faster progress, though neither he nor Adelson indicated that Orlando Economic Partnership had inhibited tech-related strategic development in any way.
Orlando Tech Community: a strategic extension of Innovate Orlando
One key component of Innovate Orlando is Orlando Tech Community, which originally was created in 2019 as the Orlando Tech Council with the hopes of streamlining efforts to grow Orlando’s then-$12 billion tech industry by centralizing information and messaging for the Orlando tech community to attract other tech businesses to the region and creating a way for small and large tech companies to communicate.
The Orlando Tech Community's chairman, tech staffing company BlueWave Resource Partners CEO Charlie Lewis, will continue to lead the group, carrying out Innovate Orlando’s strategy. Lewis will sit on Innovate Orlando's founding board of directors along with eight others, including Orlando Economic Partnership CEO Tim Giuliani and DeepWork Capital Managing Director Kathy Chiu. Beyond this leadership, there are no current plans for paid membership for Innovate Orlando, as the 400-strong membership organization Orlando Tech Community will be under the Innovate Orlando umbrella.
Orlando Tech Community is composed of leaders and members belonging to other businesses and organizations, like Lewis, Sohl and StarterSudio CEO Dawn Haynes, who chairs Tech Connect, an Orlando Tech Community committee.
Haynes said since 2022 when she took leadership at StarterStudio, a nonprofit accelerator offering educational programming, coaching and funding, she wanted to “understand what on Earth we have here [in Orlando] in terms of the tech ecosystem. For six months, I took it upon myself to try and figure that out.”
Then, Adelson and Lewis asked her to move that exploratory effort to Orlando Tech Community, where a team could help. Now, as Orlando Tech Community leaves Orlando Economic Partnership, the Tech Connect committee’s project will become an extension of Innovate Orlando.
Haynes and her committee — with support and contributions from Adelson and Lewis — have taken on the substantial job of identifying all existing and needed aspects of the region’s tech and entrepreneurial ecosystem with the goal of building a platform that supports entrepreneurs, businesses and technologists looking to function optimally in the region.
“We are looking at ways to ensure all of those resources are better connected to be able to help the entrepreneur on their journey far better than we are doing today,” she said.
Adelson said he considers the project a high priority, and Innovate Orlando plans to make detailed announcements about a forthcoming digital platform during MetaCenter Global Week in October.
More Innovate Orlando components
In addition to Orlando Tech Community outputs, Adelson points to the MetaCenter branding campaign, events like tenX Tech Wall Street Takeover and MetaCenter Global Week, and a five-year strategic plan to drive growth in Orlando’s tech ecosystem called Breakthrough Orlando.
In fact, Orlando Inno published an overview of Breakthrough Orlando in February 2022 when the program was described as an Orlando Economic Partnership initiative.
Here are the plan's main elements:
- 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
In retrospect, Innovate Orlando’s emergence is a “natural part of the progress” described by Breakthrough Orlando, said Lewis.
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