First, some perspective. Southern California, the vast region extending from Santa Barbara to San Diego and eastward to the Southwestern desert, is a major world-class economy with an annual output of goods and services approaching $500 billion.
It can lay claim to specializing not in one technology but many, from movies, television and multimedia to biomedical engineering, environmental science, telecommunications, computer networking and electronics for war and peace.
So why does the region want to give its technological base a name such as Tech Coast, or its multimedia prowess a label like Digital Coast?
Simple--for recognition. The names are a perfectly legitimate exercise in brand identity to tell a world of companies and talented people looking to invest, relocate or expand that this region is a center of technological activity. Other places less technologically deserving give themselves airs all the time.
And Southern California's campaign is needed all the more because national business magazines, when compiling their mindless lists of technological hot spots, routinely leave out this region.
If we hide our light under a bushel, we won't get the business.
But to better spread the word, we should understand what makes these new technological economies go--and how long this alchemy has resided in Southern California. The grandfather of high-tech industry resides here still, a few weeks shy of his 98th birthday. His name is Arnold O. Beckman, founder of Beckman Instruments, onetime professor of chemistry at Caltech.
Beckman pioneered the commercialization of university research in 1935, when he invented the Ph meter to help a friend measure the acetic acid in his lemon grove. It was the first of many world-class products from his inventive company. "Dave Packard [the late co-founder of Hewlett-Packard] told me he learned first from Beckman," said scientist Paul Silverman, who now heads the western region for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Beckman went on to endow universities and benefit entrepreneurs and the community. He believed in sharing knowledge.
Today the tradition continues in a buildup of biomedical research in Southern California that is astounding.
At UC Irvine, construction has begun on the Irvine Biomedical Research Center, a complex that will pursue research on genetics, cancer, immunology and other areas. An industrial park will adjoin the biomedical center to facilitate the commercialization of university science and aid the formation of companies.
