It’s been decades since the hide-and-tallow industry or James Irvine’s sheep operation dominated Orange County’s landscape, literally or economically. And California’s gold rush, accompanied by a similar silver discovery in OC, long ago gave way to citrus trees and oil, then aerospace, theme parks and real estate and ultimately, the technology-driven riches of the so-called New Economy.
Never have those changes been so apparent as in this year’s OC50, the Orange County Business Journal’s list of the area’s 50 most influential businesspeople (see pullout, beginning on page 27). Standing in the shadow of Los Angeles, the better-known metropolis it spun out from in 1889, Orange County is quickly distinguishing itself as a bona fide tech hub, home to companies that make everything from high-speed communications chips to the high-flying e-commerce retailers.
But after sometimes-heated debate among the staff of the Business Journal, the newspaper has not added a separate “technology” or “New Economy” category. Instead, the list itself makes a more dramatic statement about how important technology has become; in every category,industry, services, real estate and government and institutions,there are OC50ers with these new-economy connections.
Many area lawyers, a profession old as the hills, focus almost exclusively on high-tech and intellectual-property issues. Some landlords, such as the Irvine Co.’s Richard Sim, cater to the high-tech and dot-com tenants. And even stodgy old government is getting into the act with Rep. Chris Cox’s Internet tax legislation and university research efforts led by Ralph Cicerone and others.
In other words, everyone’s a geek these days.
Most of the New Economy players appear in the “industry” category, which comprises anyone who produces a tangible product. Henry Nicholas’ and Henry Samueli’s Broadcom Corp. and Dwight Decker’s Conexant Systems Inc. clearly fit the category, designing high-speed communications chips that make up the backbone of new-economy infrastructure. A related company is H.K. Desai’s Aliso Viejo-based QLogic Corp., which makes the networking equipment that allows faster connections to the network storage required by online businesses and others that make use of the data overload of modern business.
But how “new” are companies like Matt Massengill’s Western Digital Corp., John Tu’s and David Sun’s Kingston Technology Co. Inc. and Glenn McCusker’s Viking Components Inc., which began making PC innards years before the Internet went mainstream? These older companies, too, are part of the New Economy, as an increasingly data-centric economy has boosted demand for hard-drive data storage, and flash memory is becoming an essential component of routers, the traffic cops of the Internet.
Meanwhile, Tom Yuen’s SRS Labs, a company with roots in an already mature consumer-electronics market, is shifting to an Internet-centered business with a video and music web site and a deal with Microsoft Corp. that puts its technology into the software giant’s multimedia software. Camille Jayne of Universal Electronics Inc. is making a similar transition from “TV clickers” to controls and input devices for a new generation of interactive entertainment.
And in the same vein, new Ingram Micro Inc. CEO Kent Foster hopes to transform the company into an e-commerce stalwart by providing fulfillment services to some of the biggest players on the Internet. It is already inexorably tied to Buy.com, founded by another new-economy OC50er, Scott Blum.
Some would argue that software, listed here in the “industry” category, fits better under “services,” since designers essentially are selling information, whether over the Internet or on CD-ROM. But in any case, software makers such as Ted Smith and Lee Roberts at FileNet Corp. and Vince Smith and David Doyle at Quest Software Inc. are fundamental to the New Economy, helping transform raw data into useful information.
And thanks to companies such as FutureLink Corp. and Kingston-funded Personable.com, which rent out software accesses remotely over the Internet, the line will only grow blurrier.
Enter Chad and Ryan Steelberg, who promise to provide broadband connections needed for such services through their Broadband Digital Group.
With so many companies getting into the high-tech arena,and more importantly, so many businesses taking advantage of the products and services they offer,it isn’t so hard to see that it’s only a matter of time before the New Economy isn’t so new anymore.
