by Rob White
I attended the California Economic Summit in Los Angeles last Thursday and Friday. It was hosted by the California Stewardship Network and California Forward, which has several staff located right here in Davis and Sacramento. Information about the Summit can be found here.
The California Stewardship Network website describes the organization as founded in 2008 when “the Morgan Family Foundation launched the California Stewardship Network as a civic venture, investing $ 1.5 million over 2 years in matching grants to 10 economic regions that agreed to focus on breakthroughs led by stewardship teams composed of business, community and government civic entrepreneurs.”
It goes on to describe “civic entrepreneurs [as] individuals who see an opportunity for change, and bring the same passion and persistence to community problem solving that business entrepreneurs bring to building new ventures. They mobilize teams and collaborate across boundaries to address interrelated economic, environmental, and social challenges. They come from all walks of life-from the business, public, labor, and non-profit sectors. While they have been responsible for important advances in California’s regions over the last decade, it is an enduring challenge to grow and replenish the pool of civic entrepreneurs in a strategic and systematic fashion. Civic entrepreneurs are individuals whose focus is stewardship, whose approach is collaboration, and whose outcomes are innovative solutions.”
California Forward’s (CAFWD) website describes their mission as working with “Californians to help create a “smart” government – one that’s small enough to listen, big enough to tackle real problems, smart enough to spend our money wisely in good times and bad, and honest enough to be held accountable for results.”
It further describes CAFWD as “different from other efforts to reform our state, because we believe in the importance of working together and understand that only robust public discussion and the creation of broad coalitions can move solutions forward.
California’s state and local governments must work better together for everyone. If Californians can come together to restructure the relationships between state and local governments, the experience of other states indicates that in five to seven years, we will begin to see the benefits of better governance and renewed private investment.”
The CA Economic Summit was a culmination of several months of virtual activities by Action Teams (working groups) addressing California’s Infrastructure, Workforce, Regulations, Advancing Manufacturing, Working Landscapes, Capital and Housing with policy initiatives that advance the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ of a prosperous economy, a sustainable environment and community equity. Each team’s recommendations were then shared with the Summit attendees through the Summit Playbook, which can be found here.
Notable speakers included Lt. Governor Gavin Newsom, Kish Rajan – Director of the Governor’s Office of Business and Economic Development, Glenda Humiston – Director of CA’s USDA Rural Development Office (located in Davis) and Leon Panetta from the Panetta Institute for Public Policy.
I was part of the Advancing Manufacturing action team since the City of Davis is part of the newly designated statewide Innovation Hub known as the California Network for Manufacturing Innovation (CNMI) . My role in CNMI is on the leadership team for Policy and Communications. CNMI is a broad, collaborative organization supporting and fostering the manufacturing technology sector, with partners that include the National Research Laboratories, MEP’s, academic institutions, economic development organizations, manufacturers and equipment suppliers that support and foster California advanced manufacturing.
Strategic Goals of CNMI include:
- Improve the transfer of technology to California manufacturers
- Engage other collaboratives to improve funding and resources directed at manufacturing innovation
- Develop industry partners to enhance workforce skills
- Combine research and development efforts of collaborators
- Conduct advocacy to enhance manufacturing environment in California
CNMI became an important aspect of the work by the Advancing Manufacturing action team because the iHub is becoming the outgrowth of the work being down across the state to create a robust manufacturing industry.
The activities and outcomes that lead up to the Summit and were part of the results from the two days could be summed up as:
1. Advancing the regions-driven solutions that promote economic, social and environmental progress throughout California
2. What the necessary actions to implement the Action Plans for each team.
So what’s in it for Davis? One major theme throughout the Summit was the need for more involvement by educational institutions and the cities that host them. This was true regardless of the action team or topic. And the need for California’s educational institutions (at all levels) to lead in the development of the future workforce was apparent in each and every discussion. And there was a constant theme of the need for research and technological advancement to forward each of the initiatives.
Though this may seem like obvious statements, I wonder what we might do to better involve our world-renown research institution in each aspect of making Davis better. Or how do we assist in creating better positioning for the leadership role that UC Davis has in the Sacramento region? And above all, have we come to recognize our responsibility to the rest of California, the US and the world to better support the university as it leads in research in agriculture, hopefully solving problems like world (and local) hunger.
Maybe Bob Medearis, co-founder of Silicon Valley Bank and proud Davis resident, said it best when he recently described the university and the community of Davis as partners in the quest to “improve the human condition.” It appears to me that the outcomes from the Summit, from our local conversations here on the Vanguard and the growing collaboration in the Davis community that the time has come for all of us to focus on partnership to solve our issues and create the best outcomes that improve our human condition.
Your thoughts or comments are always welcome. I can be reached at rwhite@cityofdavis.org
“Maybe Bob Medearis, co-founder of Silicon Valley Bank and proud Davis resident, said it best when he recently described the university and the community of Davis as partners in the quest to ‘improve the human condition.’ ”
Yes, and we could do well by doing good.