innovate 2 innovation

California's innovation ecosystem achieved world leadership in the last century because of its system of higher education, high-talent workforce, advanced technical infrastructure, and enlightened policies. These perishable assets must always be renewed. Today this renewal is more critical than ever because of the unprecedented international competition for both California's markets and its innovation workforce, as well as its increasing capacity to be world-class innovators.

Noting the changing global landscape, in 2010, a bi-partisan group of California Legislators asked the California Council on Science and Technology (CCST) to assess California's Science and Technology (S&T) Innovation Ecosystem. CCST designed a two-phase approach, with this preliminary report to coincide with the opening of the 2011 legislature and the gubernatorial transition, and a detailed set of recommendations to follow in May 2011.

In late 2010, CCST convened a series of regional roundtables with industry and research leaders across the state to seek their input on the challenges faced by California and possible solutions that could be achieved building from California's S&T capacity. From these meetings, CCST identified two key strategies essential to achieve this task:

• Developing and leveraging public-private partnerships linking California's assets in education, research, technology, finance, and philanthropy to create social and technical innovations that competitors with less complete infrastructure cannot match.
• Enlisting California's S&T community in finding solutions to two of the State's major challenges, education and water, and, in so doing, enhancing California's international competitiveness.