Annas, who resides in Bellbrook and divides his time between Dayton and New York, will retire in January 2016. He spoke to Dayton B2B about Riverside Research and offered insights that area business leaders might find useful.
Q: How does Dayton compare to other cities with military installations as a defense contractor market?
A: I think Dayton, during all the trials and tribulations since 2009, has done exceedingly well. This is the major developmental center for the Air Force.
What is unique about Dayton is you have Wright-Patterson Air Force Base; you have the Air Force Research Lab that does most of the major research for the Air Force; you have a high-end technical community here; and you have universities here that are known for their engineering expertise.
So I think it is a ‘perfect storm’ kind of situation where you bring everything to bear.
Many other cities don’t have all those components in one place — they have parts of them. I think that is why Dayton has been well insulated. We did very well and continue to do very well, even during this difficult time.
Q: What does the future hold for military contracts?
A: I’m probably the wrong person to answer that. Certainly, the future I can at least say is going to be uncertain. We are seeing shifts to small business type of contract awards. We’re seeing larger and larger contracts. We’re seeing heavy, heavy competition.
Competition has really become extremely keen, even for generally small contracts that many of the large companies would never go after. So with fewer dollars, the competition is bound to ramp up.
Small business set-asides are a big deal. We don’t qualify as a small business, even though we only have 600 people. But nonetheless, we end up teaming with a lot of companies. That teaming is going to continue to go on, because some of the big companies are going to be shut out of their contracts.
Q: What can the state of Ohio do to create a better business environment for research businesses and military contractors?
A: I think the biggest thing with any of these situations is that there’s competition among all the communities for military work.
The Dayton Development Coalition has done a great job bringing attention to what kind of capabilities, facilities and workforce that we have here in the Dayton area. It’s rather unique in my experience in that we bring it all together in one place.
So, publicizing what we can do and making that story to our local congressmen so they can carry that forward is super important. Keep up the visibility of Dayton. I think it’s a winning solution for many of the problems the U.S. government’s got on the military side.
Q: What can be done to help build the next generation of science researchers?
A: The biggest thing is we’ve got to make it attractive for these people to want to come in and do this kind of work. We have to develop a workforce and that requires education, that requires jobs at the end of graduation.
We have to continue to make sure the universities understand what the workforce needs are of the Dayton region, so that they shape their curriculum to match what the (Air Force) base needs.
We deal a lot with the universities on this particular subject, because they don’t necessarily know exactly where the technology is going on the base and what the program requirements are for engineers and other skill sets, whether it’s cyber analysts or security people or whatever it happens to be.
The universities have got to build that workforce. It takes time to do that. … We need to bring in the students and we need to get the high schools to understand that these jobs are available, and push them into the engineering disciplines.
Q: What is your advice for area business leaders?
A: Probably the biggest thing is more collaboration. There is a bigger issue here than just the money.
I know companies look at that predominantly; we don’t necessarily focus on that. But for many of the companies it’s a big deal. They need to keep their people employed, stock has to rise. We don’t have stockholders or shareholders, so we’re not motivated by the same type of thing. So we need to do better collaboration.
The other part of it is the government needs to tell us where they’re going. More industry days. More exchange of information. If there is anything that hampers success, it’s the lack of collaboration and communication, in my view.
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