Today, San Diego has a vibrant entrepreneurial ecosystem that supports the creation of new technology-based firms, and also concentrations of firms in industries such as biotechnology, medical devices and telecommunications. Alongside Seattle and Austin, San Diego is well established as a major hub for technology entrepreneurship, after the traditional powerhouses of Boston and San Francisco/Silicon Valley. But this is a comparatively recent development.

In the early and mid-20^th centuries, its economy was closely tied to the Navy, aerospace, tourism and real estate development. It lacked a research university until the 1960s, with the formation of UCSD, today one of the 10 University of California campuses and a globally recognized research university.

How did the transformation take place? The university’s research success was certainly part of the story. However, UCSD’s human capital — both alumni and faculty-entrepreneurs — had a broader impact than any technology developed or licensed by the university. More importantly, the university supported the creation of CONNECT, a unique public-private partnership that built local entrepreneurial networks and provided key support for local tech startups.

Here Joel West reviews the emergence of UCSD, CONNECT and the region’s entrepreneurial hub in the late 20^th century, and offer implications for other regions seeking to create a similar transformation.

Joel West is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at Hildegard College and professor emeritus at the Keck Graduate Institute and the San José State’s Lucas College of Business. His research has been cited more than 25,000 times and has been presented on seven continents. This research has included co-editing three academic books from Oxford University Press on open innovation and special issues of Research Policy on open innovation and innovation ecosystems. He has also published numerous articles on technology startups, business ecosystems, standards competition and open source software, and has been researching technology-based startup companies in the San Diego region since 2003.

West completed an S.B. in Interdisciplinary Sciences at M.I.T., a Ph.D. in Management from UC Irvine, and an M.A. in Religion from Cranmer Theological House. He was the co-founder and chief executive of two technology-based startups, Palomar Software and Shield Pharma, as well as the co-founder of two trade associations, an academic conference and a theology journal.