When Gary Spanner told friends he was taking on a part-time role as executive director of Fuse SPC, he said their responses had three stages.

“First they laughed, then said I was perfect for it, and then they told me, ‘Good luck,’” the retired former economic development leader for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory recently told the Tri-Cities Area Journal of Business.

The entrepreneurial incubator is entering a new era as it reinvents both its leadership and its space to better serve the business community. It recently sold the building it’s called home in Richland’s Parkway for nearly a decade, and it is refocusing on creating a hub that attracts more people and fosters collaboration. 

The world of work has transformed significantly since Fuse began 12 years ago, with remote work and virtual meetings shifting from novel concepts to everyday norms.

Despite the shift, Spanner said there’s still great value in people working together in shared spaces. It’s his goal to have Fuse showcase how in-person work is still an ideal model while also providing the support and resources budding enterprises need to succeed.

“There’s plenty of research that shows people are more effective when they’re around other people, whether that’s collaborating during a meeting or socializing over lunch,” Spanner said.

Growing businesses and networking were the focus of Spanner’s career at PNNL. An engineer by education, he spent 23 years at the lab working with more than 1,000 local and national entrepreneurs and tech businesses to help them grow and flourish by connecting them to PNNL resources and other partners. He was even an early investor in Fuse.

That extensive experience is what drove Fuse’s leadership to reach out to him and persucome out of his eight-year retirement, replacing Paul Carlisle, who recently moved into a new position at PNNL to increase collaborative technology commercialization and entrepreneurship with Washington State University Tri-Cities.

“We are excited to have Gary join Fuse,” said Phil Ohl, Fuse SPC’s chair, in a statement. “Gary’s history of economic development and his network of local and regional entrepreneurs will be a tremendous asset for Fuse and the local startup community.”

Spanner’s role comes with a full plate. While Fuse no longer owns the building, it will continue to manage leases for offices available to entrepreneurs. He’ll serve as Fuse’s public face and liaison with entities such as chambers of commerce and local government. Fundraising also will be important to support its mission as will expanding programming that supports businesses, something that fell off as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic several years ago.

Spanner said he already is looking at ways to move Fuse’s focus to serving “primary industries,” or those that would bring new outside investment into the Tri-Cities, such as agricultural technology, manufacturing and technical services. At the same time, the organization’s space needs reinvigoration to bring more people in and make it a hub for the business community.

Spanner said he’s considering several efforts to initiate that transformation, from promoting Fuse’s available spaces, such as a podcasting booth, to possibly adding services such as child care, to make it easier for parents to come in and work.

“If that’s something that could make the co-work space more useful, we should look at it,” he said.

The business environment is evolving rapidly, and the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence, or AI, is likely to provide more disruption, Spanner said. That could create more challenges for Fuse as entrepreneurs and established companies alike look for efficiencies.

But even after just a few weeks on the job, Spanner said his new role has reinforced his view on the power of dedicated workspaces.

“When I started coming in, my wife said when I came home that I was more energized, so there’s that,” he said.