Driving deeper trust and shared action from the region’s “Generals”
By Eric Eide and Steve Gilison
When describing how the Alliance serves the entrepreneurial ecosystem in SoCal, we often like to compare ourselves to NATO because we act as a neutral organizing body to coordinate efforts between the local innovation hubs in the region and help them build out their infrastructure. Also, in most respects we work directly with the leaders (“Generals”) and not the soldiers who, in this analogy, are the founders and entrepreneurs.
And like NATO, we occasionally convene a large group of leaders for a Summit, which we successfully accomplished on November 14th at the Research Park at UC Irvine for our first annual SoCal Ecosystem Leadership Forum. The forum provided an unprecedented opportunity to gather a cross-section of innovation leaders from across the region — Santa Barbara to San Diego; Silicon Beach to Riverside — to meet and learn from each other, build relationships and new partnerships, and work on regional solutions to our shared challenges in supporting innovation broadly. Our approach was to foster new and improved relationships that can lead to deeper trust and ultimately shared action.
The all day workshop was professionally facilitated by Dr. Diana Joseph, founder of the Corporate Accelerator Forum who is one of those rare souls who “gets ecosystems” and was able to masterfully engage 50 diverse attendees which included founders, corporates, investors, academic/tech transfer, ecosystem organizations, government and others who defy simple categorization. The day was made possible by generous support from The Irvine Company who hosted us at their amazing conference center and our track sponsors: Wells Fargo, Verizon, and Kaiser Permanente.
Continue reading on the Alliance website.
Steve Gilison is Head of Programs and Operations at the Alliance for SoCal Innovation. You can also find him on Linkedin and the Alliance website.
Eric Eide is Director of Ecosystem Development at the Alliance for SoCal Innovation. You can also find him on LinkedIn and the Alliance website.
