There are elements of truth in what the Los Angeles Times was trying to say with its July 9 story, “Dreams of High Tech Glory Passing OC By,” but the reporters seemed to gloss over, or totally miss, important inflection points over the past several years. And I found their take off-base, as if they were trying to prove that Orange County was nowhere, rather than actually reporting on where things are at. A few elements of what they missed:
n Irvine Spectrum’s success. The Spectrum has more than 2,600 companies in one industrial development, including many technology-oriented firms. It’s not a research hotbed, but a lot of technology is being practiced there.
n Broadcom and Conexant. The Times talked about our not having an Intel. But we have a growing communications semconductor industry, headed by Broadcom and Conexant. These firms have been hugely successful over the past two years and have certainly attracted national attention to Orange County. They have both been on serious expansion efforts and are becoming technology powerhouses. Conexant was spawned here out of Rockwell, but Broadcom moved here, from LA (a location that was lauded in the Times story).
n University Research Park. It’s a hot property. In the past few weeks we’ve interviewed several technology-intensive firms,employing something like 80% engineers,who will be very dependent on the outcomes and interactions with the university. While this is not basic science, it is the backbone of the technology business. Companies in our park are expanding, as are their relationships with the university. It is a big part of our future and that of Orange County and it is being built far faster than predicted. Yes, we would like to have biotechnology and life-science companies there and we are working hard behind the scenes to make that happen. Biotechnology is a real challenge. Should the university have started the Park earlier, as the Times story suggests? It tried to, but two things shot it down. First was the real estate slump of the early ’90s. Second was the budget cuts in the state that so hurt the university. But why criticize the fact that it is happening now?
n UC Irvine’s high-tech enrollment. High-tech can be a dangerous term to toss around, but if you track the direction of enrollment and graduates in what I consider to be the high-tech departments at UCI (Engineering, Info and Computer Science, parts of Physical Science), the trends are toward dramatic growth. ICS has almost doubled in the past five years, with most of that growth happening now. Both ICS and Electrical and Computer Engineering are growing recently at greater than 25% annual rates. And with the overall growth in the student body expected over the next 10 years, I believe that we will graduate more computer experts by 2010 than any other university west of the Rockies.
n New partnerships. There is a big story about the birth of new research capability in Orange County at UCI’s Center for Pervasive Communications, which we all hope will be a cornerstone of the new California Institute for Information Technology and Telecommunications, a joint effort between UC Irvine and UC San Diego. Industry came to us and the faculty were very responsive to create this new center. It will bring new faculty talent in very important technology areas for the future of the county. And if we can properly leverage this into a California Institute for Science and Innovation, we could be adding somewhere between $60 million and $100 million in new infrastructure and research funding for the fields of IT and communications. These partnerships will also create important new linkages among UCI’s schools and programs. This will be groundbreaking if we can pull it off and I think we will.
n Defense conversion. We hardly even remember this term. But a good part of what has happened in OC (and also in LA) has been the conversion of defense-related research at large firms into quite different activity at smaller firms like the many biomedical device and material companies around the county. OC has a very high concentration of biomedical device firms because of this successful conversion. I consider this a real growth industry.
Stop ranting already. What did the Times get right?
n Lack of hot spots for networking. There is a kind of suburban safeness and sameness to Orange County that may not excite the hot and edgy kind of minds that flourish in creative ventures. This is not an easy fix, since it has a lot to do with the culture of this beautiful, sunny place, but certainly LA has sun and also has the edge.
n Modest size of R & D; activity in OC. UC Irvine is the main game in town, and we are only 35 years old. Very few large companies are doing serious R & D; in OC. The loss of the big defense companies hurt in this regard. Surfwear companies do their research in the ocean. We do need to nurture and grow our R & D; capability in the county.
n Venture capital. I know there isn’t enough, despite what some have said. We need more local money that has both presence and panache. We must learn to promote ourselves better.
n Cultural “disconnectedness” of OC. It seems to be a hard place to get solid and visible networking to happen. Smaller network activities prevail and with success. But we don’t have a UCSD Connect, or an MIT Enterprise Forum going on. UCI will be taking this issue on very seriously in the coming months, hoping as well to work with Chapman University, Cal State Fullerton, and a cadre of organizations in Orange County.
n Leadership. We do need more time to develop more technology and business leaders. We’ve got to graduate a generation of MBAs with technological savvy and need some more time for our Research Park to mature.
Comparisons with regions like Si Valley and Boston are OK, but have to be done with some understanding of regional maturity. Orange County is going in the right direction. We need to collaborate better and promote ourselves better.
Let’s not be afraid to recognize our weaknesses. But let’s be sure to recognize our strengths.
Moebus is vice chancellor of university advancement at the University of California, Irvine.
