We recently teamed with Qualcomm and co-hosted an event with the independent, DC-based think tank, Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Through the event, we brought together industry, government and academic players that are all working together to strengthen our Greater San Diego Semiconductor Ecosystem.
Planning for this event got me thinking about an important role that world-class engineering schools play — a role that extends beyond our research, workforce development, and technology commercialization work.
This additional role is to convene the collaborators and advance the conversations about how best to strengthen the innovation ecosystems that we belong to. And I don’t just mean ecosystems defined by the physical boundaries of a campus — but innovation ecosystems that are regional in size.
If innovation is to be truly successful, I believe that we must do much more than count startups. We must act on the following four mega trends.
- University startups need opportunities to incubate on campus for longer periods of time. As a society, we can not afford to cast startups out into the global marketplace before they are fully ready to compete.
- Entrepreneurship must be thought of as an all-community activity. It is insufficient to have engineering and business students alone build startups. Our startups need talent from all parts of a comprehensive campus like UC San Diego — from arts and humanities to social sciences and all the way to policy.
- We need larger and more comprehensive IP-free zones on campus. Startups incubating on campus must be able to develop their own IP portfolios, and heterogeneous industry-academic teams need more IP-free zones in which to collaborate on shared challenges that are holding back emerging fields.
- The boundaries of innovation ecosystems must expand to encompass larger geographical regions. It is across larger regions that you find the necessary skills and capabilities for industry ecosystems to compete in the global marketplace. One example of such a region is the semiconductor innovation ecosystem that runs from San Diego north to Santa Barbara.
With these four points in mind, the CSIS meeting that we just co-hosted brought home a fifth element for me in a fresh way.
Innovation ecosystems need access to complementary manufacturing ecosystems — including supply chains and factories. Innovation and manufacturing can not exist in disassociated realms.
Here at the Jacobs School, we are absolutely dedicated to contributing to the full suite of efforts I have outlined above. We will be moving forward on as many of these themes as we can. The fact that we stepped up to co-host the CSIS event is, in and of itself, an example of our willingness to act constructively on behalf of larger innovation ecosystems.
Looking ahead to this November, our UC San Diego Fusion Engineering Institute is central to campus efforts to host and drive conversations at the California Fusion Energy Convening 2025 at UC San Diego’s Park & Market.
This is yet another opportunity to step up and strengthen our regional, state and national fusion innovation ecosystems.
As noted in a new state-wide report from the San Diego Regional Economic Development Corporation, the fusion energy industry in California could support more than 40,000 jobs and bring $125 billion to the state economy in the next decade — if we set up the right innovation ecosystem support.
Building our regional innovation ecosystem is something we all can do. More on this in the item below on securing the future through planning.
As always, I can be reached at DeanPisano@ucsd.edu.
Sincerely,
Al
Albert ("Al") P. Pisano
Dean, UC San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering
Special Adviser to the Chancellor for Campus Strategic Initiatives
