Silicon Valley has always been a safe haven for risk-takers, entrepreneurs, and big thinkers. But, it is also home to one of the most innovative public-private partnerships in the country: Joint Venture Silicon Valley.
As the fourth feature in our series, Creative Capstones, we interviewed Russell Hancock, president of Joint Venture Silicon Valley, to learn more about Silicon Valley, Joint Venture, and the organization’s current initiatives to “build the next (and greener) Silicon Valley.”
Creative Class Group (CCG): Tell us about Silicon Valley. What makes it a special place to live?
Russell Hancock: We’re a sun-kissed land with countless amenities, but I love Silicon Valley because it is an amazing collection of people. They’re talented, they’re creative, they’re from all over the world, and they are doing innovative things. The culture here is all about risk-taking and there’s a high tolerance for failure, and this has made it possible for innovation to blossom here more than most any other place you might name. You can feel it when you’re here – the buzz and the energy – and it brings out the best in people. In Silicon Valley everything seems possible – inventing a better mousetrap, inventing a new energy future, making a niftier gadget, planning communities that have fabulous urban designs… there’s a sense that if you can’t do it here, you can’t do it anywhere.
CCG: Describe Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network. What is the organization’s role in economic development? What makes the organization different from a traditional economic development organization?
Hancock: Joint Venture is an unusual creature, and was highly experimental at the time of its founding. Now the Joint Venture model has been proven many times over, and is embraced as the region’s clearinghouse for information and the central gathering place for the region’s leaders. It works by bringing together the leaders of our Valley across every major sector – we have mayors and city managers on our board, and they are seated alongside CEOs and senior business leaders. They’re joined as well by the college and university presidents, by labor leaders, foundation chiefs, and a host of other heads of community-based organizations. There’s no other group in Silicon Valley that bridges all the sectors in the way that we do.
Our mission is to fix the Valley’s problems, simple as that. Anything that relates to our vibrancy and vitality, to our quality of life, and to the business climate becomes our issue. And this is also our approach to economic development. We’re not a traditional economic development group, if by economic development you mean printing glossy brochures with flattering pictures and trying to recruit companies to locate here. Our approach is to identify and fix the region’s problems, so this will continue to be a great place to innovate, to start and grow a company.
CCG: Joint Venture just released its “State of the Valley Index.” What were some of the key findings? How will regional leaders use the document in positioning the region for future growth?
Hancock: The Index is filled with bad news, actually. We’re hemorrhaging jobs, our incomes are dropping, we’re not seeing as much venture capital formation, we’re not attracting as much federal funding as we once did. But there’s no sense of panic around here. People feel like we’re participating in a downturn that is national and global, and that we’re going to find a way to innovate out of it. People throughout Silicon Valley make heavy use of our Index, but it’s fascinating because everybody uses it in their own special way. It’s sort of like a Rorschach test – people seize on different indicators and go off on their own rants. It’s all good because it creates a rich and wonderful dialogue across the region.
CCG: We understand Silicon Valley was one of the first to launch a “Climate Prosperity Project.” Tell us about the program and its accomplishments/milestones to date.
Hancock: Our Climate Prosperity project is doing nothing less than bringing America to a new energy future. We see it as Silicon Valley’s biggest opportunity in decades. In other words, our view is that global warming isn’t a crisis, it’s an opportunity, to innovate, to make money, and to use the market to change our consumption patterns and end our dependency on oil. We’ve assembled a council of Silicon Valley’s best and brightest coming out of the cleantech sector, and we’ve matched them with counterparts in the public sector, and the meetings are inspiring because everybody is on the same page, asking the same question: How can we do this better, faster? How can we accelerate these changes and facilitate their emergence in Silicon Valley? Then, how can we scale what works in Silicon Valley to the entire nation? Our biggest accomplishments to date are forming the nation’s largest renewable energy power purchasing program, building a new association for the battery technology cluster, making a serious run at DOE funding for an energy retrofit program on commercial buildings, and pulling together a consortium of tech companies who want to make the nation’s best smart grid.
For more information about Joint Venture and its current initiatives, visit www.jointventure.org.
