Excerpt
San Diego is known for being on the cutting edge of life science, wireless technology and, increasingly, wireless health — and that’s not an accident.
Imagine if French software companies started dominating the Internet and fashion designers from Silicon Valley started dictating next year’s trends. Impossible? No, but it’s certainly unlikely. Some very specific elements came together in Silicon Valley to enable that region to nurture Facebook, Intel and Apple, just like Paris evolved over the last century to become the world’s fashion capital.
The same goes for San Diego. What fuels this region’s unique innovation personality — what people focus on and how they do it? The region’s size, its many research and educational institutions, the infrastructure and urban planning decisions, a critical mass of talent and capital, the booms and busts of certain industries and even the sunshine helped transform this region into a vortex of creative energy and action, says Mary Walshok, an innovation expert at UC San Diego and co-founder of CONNECT, a nonprofit that fosters local entrepreneurship. Her new book, out later this year, is called “Invention and Reinvention: The Evolution of San Diego’s Entrepreneurial Economy.”
People involved in the region’s “entrepreneurial economy” — from experienced CEOs to aspiring startup founders to venture capitalists to academics — say three features characterize San Diego’s unique innovation DNA; it is collaborative between individuals and organizations, it does not scare away newcomers, and it embraces risk and perseverance with that beach-meets-frontier West Coast swagger.
A culture of collaboration
Collaborative, open to dialogue: that’s how people describe the local life science and technology innovation landscape in San Diego.
“What’s interesting about San Diego is how open it is, how permeable it is,” Walshok said. Countless others seconded her, as if they’d all received the same “we play nice together” memo.
One reason is that many startups are spin offs from larger employers that shed workers during economic downturns. It feels like everyone knows everyone else, many said. A second reason are the trade and nonprofit groups that were created to bring together entrepreneurs, researchers, investors and anyone who can support their goals. These include BIOCOM, the local chapter of the MIT Enterprise Forum, CommNexus, the San Diego Venture Group, StartupCircle and CONNECT.
Other cities where science and technology are thriving have networking groups. Boston is a smorgasbord of schmoozing opportunities for the entrepreneurially inclined. But people in Boston may be somewhat less inclined to team up, share resources or help each other out, various people who’ve experienced the startup scene in both cities said.
“Nobody is under any false impressions about the degree to which companies are in competition with each other. But at the same time, we found a very collaborative environment,” said Eric David, co-founder and chief strategy officer of Organovo, a 3D tissue bioprinting company. David moved to San Diego about a year ago from San Francisco. He is also familiar with the biotech scenes in New York and Cambridge, Mass. Companies, academics and investors come together “in a much more open dialogue here than occurs in either San Francisco or Boston,” and that makes a difference, especially for startups, he said.
'My kind of town, San Diego is'....
No comments:
Post a Comment