Keeping California Competitive
UC Riverside Engineering Professors, Graduate Students
Examine What Keeps California WIRED for Innovation
RIVERSIDE, Calif. –– In the wake of a report that calls for government to take research and new intellectual property into account when measuring thestrength of the U.S. economy, Bourns College of Engineering professors and graduate students are two years into a project that does just that for California.
The U.S. Department of Commerce’s Advisory Committee for Measuring Innovation in the 21st Century Economy issued a report Jan. 18 that recommends a change in the way the government measures economic health. It recommends the inclusion of “intangibles” such as new ideas and intellectual property, as an important measure of the nation’s economic productivity.
The final report specifically recommends research on “innovation drivers, impediments and enablers” and calls on the Secretary of Commerce to convene workshops and forums to begin. That is precisely the kind of information the Bourns College of Engineering group has already been examining to identify successful models of innovation.
The project is part of the U.S. Department of Labor’s first generation WIRED (Workforce Innovation in Regional Economic Development) initiative. To gather information, graduate students and faculty interview business leaders from the California Innovation Corridor, which stretches along coastal California from Alameda County south to San Diego County and includes Riverside and San Bernardino Counties.
Doctoral candidates from Bourns College of Engineering and Masters in Business Administration students and from UCR’s Anderson Graduate School of Management are collaborating on the WIRED project, managed by Christine Pence, who teaches entrepreneurship and is Director of Workforce Innovation Programs at Bourns. “The engineering students are learning about the business side of technology and innovation, and the business students are learning how engineering happens,” Pence said.
Bourns College of Engineering Dean Reza Abbaschian, the principal investigator on the project, said it is designed to study the process of innovation because the U.S. must find ways to break out of the destructive quarterly cycles of current economic practice.
"Basing everything on short-term quarterly profits is killing the economy," he said. "We need to learn how we can bring our innovative spirit back." By studying innovation from an engineering perspective, Abbaschian said he hoped the findings could begin a paradigm shift in our thinking about profit and competition. “We've lost manufacturing - we cannot lose R&D and innovation,” he said. “We have to relearn how to make effective business decisions that nurture innovative ideas, breakthrough technologies and new solutions rather than just the bottom line."
In February 2006, the California Space Authority was selected to lead the WIRED initiative designed to stimulate innovation, transform the supply chain, and create a workforce that is competitive in the global environment that characterizes the 21st Century.
”The WIRED project addresses California’s need to stay competitive within the global economy,” said Andrea Seastrand, executive director of the California Space Authority. “WIRED involves all the components of the workforce in California, including academia, industry, and government. This project will provide content to fuel California’s innovation, which is critical to our nation’s economic strength and national security.”
After only two decades, the Bourns College of Engineering has achieved significant growth in its enrollment, research holdings and reputation to become ranked as one the best public engineering colleges of its size in the nation. The number of faculty and students has both tripled since 2000, with a concomitant rise in state-of-the-art laboratories, equipment and technological capabilities. Interdisciplinary and collaborative efforts are a hallmark of the College in education, research and industrial partnerships, particularly in three affiliated research centers. BCOE offers an interdisciplinary major in Materials Science and Engineering as well as B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees through the five College departments: Bioengineering, Chemical & Environmental, Computer Science, Electrical and Mechanical.
Related Links:
Read a Business Week story on the report:
here
University of California, Riverside
Bourns College of Engineering
For more about the WIRED project, visit http://innovatecalifornia.net
The full report on innovation from the Department of Commerce:
here