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Engage Colorado — Issue 23 — June 30, 2026
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This newsletter has been published by Engage Colorado.
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The Methodology Behind The Honest Assessment
The Twelve Factors Driving Geographic Preference
This Engage Colorado Newsletter reflects the personal opinions of Dan Caruso, written with the support of the Caruso Ventures team. The Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future Coalition did not review and has not endorsed this Engage Colorado Newsletter.
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This newsletter pauses the Innovation Vision section-by-section walk to introduce the diagnostic framework that sits behind The Honest Assessment — and behind Section III of the Innovation Vision, which lands in Wednesday's newsletter.
A note on authorship: As with the broader Innovation Vision and The Honest Assessment, I led the preparation of this section. It has not been formally reviewed nor endorsed by the full coalition that signed The Open Letter.
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Destination Geographies vs. Departure Geographies
Before the framework itself, two terms central to the diagnostic:
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→ Destination Geographies are the states that are winning the competition for founders, investors, and innovation-economy companies. The Honest Assessment names six in particular: Texas, Florida, Tennessee, North Carolina, Arizona, and Utah. Each is gaining capital, talent, and headquarters relocations at a faster pace than they are losing them.
→ Departure Geographies are the states that are losing the competition. The Assessment names six in particular: California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Each is losing capital, talent, and headquarters faster than they are attracting them — even as some retain world-class institutional anchors (Silicon Valley, Wall Street, Boston biotech, Chicago commerce) that resist redistribution.
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Colorado was once clearly in the Destination peer group — and has drifted into Departure territory. The Twelve Factors are the diagnostic lens that exposes how that drift happened, factor by factor. They are also the framework on which the Innovation Vision's roadmap for reversing the drift rests.
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The Framework
We score each geography on four categories:
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| 1 |
What the Geography Offers — structural assets like quality of life, infrastructure, and institutional depth |
| 2 |
The Business and Political Climate — how elected leadership treats business and signals that posture to capital |
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The Cost of Doing Business — taxes, cost of living, and the forward spending trajectory |
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The Regulatory Landscape — the compliance environment and the pace at which it is changing |
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Each category is scored on two dimensions: current state (where the geography stands today) and trajectory (where it is heading). Both matter, because capital plans on the trajectory as much as on the snapshot — a geography with strong current assets but a declining trajectory reads very differently than one whose current state is weaker but on a clear path of improvement.
Both dimensions are scored on a 1–5 scale, with 5 being the strongest and 1 the weakest.
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What the Geography Offers — Colorado in Context
Last week's Engage Colorado newsletter (Section II of the Innovation Vision) celebrated Colorado's unique and compelling strengths as an innovation ecosystem — the mountain geography, the federal labs, the universities, the cultural and recreational depth, the broad sectoral leadership. That entire celebration sits inside Category 1: What the Geography Offers.
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Current |
Trajectory |
Average |
| Destination Geographies (average) |
3.4 |
3.9 |
3.7 |
| Departure Geographies (average) |
4.2 |
2.7 |
3.5 |
| Colorado |
4.3 |
3.9 |
4.1 |
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What the data shows
Colorado scores higher than the average of either peer group — on both current state and trajectory. Its 4.3 current state edges the Departure average (4.2) and substantially exceeds the Destination average (3.4). Its 3.9 trajectory matches the Destination average and far exceeds Departure (2.7). The combined 4.1 average is the highest in the framework on Category 1.
The most striking pattern in the data is that Departure Geographies actually outscore Destination Geographies on Category 1 current state. This is not an accident. The Departure cluster is largely made up of states — California, New York, Massachusetts, Illinois — that built their innovation economies during earlier decades precisely because of their Category 1 strengths: Stanford and Berkeley anchoring Silicon Valley; MIT and Harvard anchoring Boston biotech; NYU and Columbia anchoring Wall Street; the cultural depth of all three. Those are real and durable assets.
But the trajectory is where Departure Geographies slide. The 2.7 trajectory score reflects declining infrastructure spend, eroding institutional health, and weakening public safety in the urban cores those institutions anchor. The current-state gap between Departure and Destination is small (4.2 vs. 3.4), and in Departure's favor. The trajectory gap is larger, and in favor of Destination (2.7 vs. 3.9).
Colorado is unusual in scoring well on both dimensions. The 4.3 current state and 3.9 trajectory reflect both a strong foundation today and a path that is preserving and extending what has been built. This is the category where Colorado most clearly belongs in — and exceeds — the Destination peer group.
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Category 1 is NOT why Colorado has drifted toward Departure. Colorado's drift is happening despite this strength — meaning the drift is coming from the other three categories. Section III on Wednesday will examine exactly that.
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Coming Wednesday: Section III
Wednesday's newsletter — Section III of the Innovation Vision: The Self-Inflicted and Correctable Negative Momentum — applies the Twelve Factors framework to Colorado on Categories 2, 3, and 4, and documents where the drift is happening and why.
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