How can a Tucson business and a Phoenix business actually collaborate?

Scott Cundill · 2026-09-22 · Tucson

By treating the other city as a source of partners rather than a rival market, and by getting introduced to specific people there instead of advertising at the whole metro. The two cities are about a hundred miles apart on the I-10, under two hours in normal traffic, on the same clock every day of the year. Almost nothing about the geography is stopping this. The habits are.

This is for owners at either end who have noticed that their pipeline stops at the county line.

Why do two cities this close behave like separate markets?

Because each one is big enough to keep you busy, and that is a trap.

Phoenix is large enough that a firm there can spend a decade never needing to look south. Tucson is distinct enough, with its own university, its own industries and its own way of doing things, that plenty of businesses there never look north except to complain about the traffic. Both cities are self sufficient, so neither develops the habit of collaboration, and the corridor between them stays a commute rather than a market.

Regional planners have called this stretch the Sun Corridor for years, and they study it as a single economy. The businesses inside it mostly do not behave like one.

What does collaboration mean here, in practice?

Something more specific than referrals.

Referrals move a customer from one business to another. Collaboration means two firms doing work together that neither could take on alone. In this corridor that usually looks like one of four things.

Joint bids, where a Tucson firm and a Phoenix firm put their names on the same proposal because together they cover the whole scope. Shared capacity, where the one with the machine, the licence or the crew takes the overflow from the other. Subcontracting in both directions, rather than the usual one way street. And shared expertise, where a specialist at one end becomes the reason a client at the other end says yes.

All four need the same thing to start, which is a person who knows both sides well enough to suggest it.

Which industries have the most obvious overlap?

The engineering end of both cities, first.

Tucson has a long standing cluster around optics, aerospace and defence, built up around the university and the firms that grew alongside it. The Phoenix side, especially Chandler and the wider East Valley, has semiconductors, advanced manufacturing and aerospace of its own. These are not competing economies, they are adjacent capabilities, and the supply chains already run between them whether anyone plans it or not.

Beyond that, the professional side travels easily. Accountants, lawyers, recruiters, marketing firms and consultants all work under the same state rules at both ends, which removes most of the friction that makes cross border collaboration hard elsewhere.

Does the distance actually matter?

Less than people assume, and the clock matters not at all.

Arizona does not observe daylight saving, so Tucson and Phoenix run on the same time every single day of the year. There is no scheduling maths, no half hour of confusion twice a year, and no window to protect. If you can take a call at ten, so can they.

The drive is the real cost, and it is a couple of hours. That is enough to stop anyone doing it casually, which is exactly why the introduction has to be worth the trip. It is not enough to make a genuine partnership impractical. A first meeting in person is realistic here, and the relationship it starts is different from one that lives entirely on video.

How do you find the right firm at the other end?

You ask somebody who already knows them, and you are specific about what you want to build.

The vague version of this request goes nowhere. "I would like to meet some people in Phoenix" gives a connector nothing to work with. The useful version names the shape of the partner and the reason. "I am looking for a machine shop in the East Valley that can take overflow from us in Q1, and I would bring them work all year" is something a person can act on in an afternoon.

Say what you are offering as well as what you need. Collaboration proposals that only describe the benefit to the sender tend to be read once and filed.

How does My Most Trusted support this?

By making sure the person doing the introducing actually knows both parties.

Every trusted connection on the platform is added one at a time, with the member confirming they genuinely know that person. There is no bulk upload, so nobody in the network is a name somebody harvested from a list.

When you want to reach a particular firm, the platform shows you who you already share, by name, and tells you honestly when the answer is nobody. If you share nobody, there is still a route, through a member who does know them, with the reason written out and every word visible before it goes.

Nothing is sent automatically. The platform drafts, the person decides. And each member's standing on the Trust-O-Meter reflects introductions and recommendations actually given and received, so the people who collaborate most are the easiest to find.

What does the Bridge itself do?

It puts a named person at each end of the corridor.

Jack Rand hosts the Tucson side, from Green Valley, and meets people across both cities. Chad Knauer hosts the Phoenix side from Chandler, and works with the engineering and manufacturing firms that fill that end of the Valley. Between them, a request that starts in one city has somewhere real to land in the other.

Both are listed by name, with their own profiles on platforms we do not own, so you can check them before you spend a morning driving.

Where should you start this week?

With one specific collaboration you would genuinely sign.

Write down the kind of firm at the other end that would make it possible, and what you would bring to it. Then ask one of the hosts, and be willing to make the drive when it is worth making.

The corridor already exists. The only thing missing is somebody introducing the two ends of it to each other.