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Newsletter — Issue 37 — Thursday, August 6, 2026
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This newsletter has been published by Engage Colorado.
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A Four-Part Recap · Part 3 of 4
The Vision and the Voices
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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Where We Left Off
In Part 1 of 4, we recapped the origin story of Engage Colorado — the Open Letter, delivered April 9, 2026 with more than 210 founding signatories and now grown to 542. In Part 2 of 4, we recapped The Honest Assessment — the diagnostic report that anchors this series — the silence from Colorado's political leaders in response to it, and the encouraging engagement I am hearing from many of you.
Today, we turn to the affirmative companion — the Innovation Vision for Colorado — and to the Colorado voices weighing in through The Bear Roars podcast.
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Part 3 of 4
The Innovation Vision for Colorado — The Path Forward
I took the initiative to draft The Innovation Vision for Colorado — Action Item #2 of the Open Letter — as a starting point: a long-term, bipartisan strategy that could serve as a shared foundation for the coalition of leaders willing to help Colorado reverse course. If The Honest Assessment names the problem, the Innovation Vision names what Colorado can become — and how to get there.
As this series transitions from diving deeper into the problem toward exploring solutions, the Innovation Vision will be one of the primary sources we draw upon.
At its core is a single statement:
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The Vision Statement
Colorado will be the most attractive innovation ecosystem in the world — and every Coloradan will share in the economic and cultural prosperity that results from being the world's leading geography for innovation.
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The Innovation Vision is a twenty-year, bipartisan strategy.
Colorado begins from a position few states can claim:
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302K+
Technology
Workers
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$106B
Technology
Output
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4
Federal
Laboratories
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Add to that two major research universities, and genuine leadership across aerospace, quantum, AI and digital infrastructure, biotech, energy, agtech, and the outdoor industry — all set against a quality of life that has drawn talent for generations. The foundation is real. The current trajectory is what has to change.
The Vision lays out how Colorado reverses course — by declaring its intent to lead, repositioning its brand around political balance, resetting its posture on artificial intelligence, anchoring its leadership across the sectors that will define the global economy, embracing manufacturing, attracting Big Tech, restoring the federal partnership, investing in culture and the outdoor industry, growing its venture-capital base, and strengthening its professional economic-development apparatus.
No single office or leader can deliver this. It will be pursued as a coalition of the willing — the current and incoming governors, Colorado's federal delegation, its technology and business leaders, its wealth creators and philanthropic families, its universities, and its civic and sector organizations — each with a distinct role to play.
Read the full Vision: The Innovation Vision for Colorado
Many of you have been sharing your ideas with me for what should be part of the Innovation Vision — priorities, strategies, and specific initiatives Colorado could pursue. I am capturing them, and they will inform this series as it transitions from diagnosis to the path forward. Please keep them coming.
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The Bear Roars Podcast — Colorado Voices Weighing In
Increasingly, I have been using The Bear Roars podcast to dive deeper into the topics behind Engage Colorado — bringing guests from across Colorado's economic and civic life to talk through what they are seeing on the ground.
Recent conversations that connect directly to the diagnosis:
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Rick Sapkin, Owner of Edgemark — one of Colorado's most active commercial real estate investors, on what the cost curve and downtown office vacancy story means for developers and tenants deciding whether to keep betting on Colorado.
Rebecca Holmes, CEO of Colorado Education Initiative — on the education and workforce pipeline that ultimately determines whether Colorado stays a magnet for the industries that pay well and grow fast.
Bijal Choksi, Founding Partner at HuWork — psychologist and author of Still Human: How to Build Organizations Where Leaders and Teams Thrive with AI, on the human side of the AI revolution — leadership, workforce, and the skills that matter most as AI capabilities accelerate.
Seth Levine, Co-Founder and Partner at Foundry — a founding voice of Foundry Group and one of the most influential venture capitalists in Colorado's tech history, on where Colorado sits today and what its innovation ecosystem needs from the investor community.
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Most of my guests are leaders from Colorado's tech ecosystem. On many of these conversations, we discuss the opportunities and challenges of Colorado's current political climate.
These voices are not a single narrative. They are individual, honest, and specific — and increasingly, the themes converge on what The Honest Assessment has documented.
Listen: The Bear Roars Podcast
If you have ideas for who would make for a great guest on The Bear Roars podcast, please share them. You can reply directly to this newsletter or send me a note on LinkedIn.
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Next Tuesday — The Final Part 4 of 4
Part 4 of 4 concludes the recap series on Tuesday, August 11. It walks through where Colorado stands after nine factors — a category-by-category recap of the drivers series so far — and points toward what comes next, as this series transitions from diving deeper into the problem toward exploring solutions.
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