2014 Newsletters

Joint Venture taps Larry Carr as new Executive Vice President

Joint Venture Silicon Valley has appointed veteran elected official and public affairs executive Larry Carr to the newly created position of executive vice president.

Carr, a member of the Morgan Hill City Council since 2000 and former public affairs official for San Jose State University and Stanford Hospital and Clinics, becomes second-in-command to Joint Venture CEO Russell Hancock, supervising the day-to-day operations and management of the organization.

Read the news release.

Economic Development Alliance talks sales tax incentives with state officials
California state officials briefed members of the Silicon Valley EDA on sales tax exemption programs to support manufacturing, cleantech, and research and development at the organization’s August meeting in Morgan Hill, hosted at Guglielmo Winery by Edith Ramirez, Morgan Hill principal planner and economic development manager and SVEDA chair.

Staff from the California Alternative Energy and Advanced Transportation Financing Authority (CAEATFA) discussed their sales tax exclusion program, and the state Board of Equalization outlined the new manufacturing and R&D equipment exemption. Both incentives have significant value to Silicon Valley’s driving industries – be sure to ask a SVEDA member if you qualify!
Read more about Silicon Valley EDA.

Climate Task Force resumes meetings, assesses opportunities

Joint Venture’s Public Sector Climate Task Force ends its summer break with a September 4 meeting about two important climate response programs, Climate Corps Bay Area and CivicSpark, and an update from the Governor’s Office of Planning and Research (OPR).

Both CivicSpark and Climate Corps Bay Area are fellowship programs under AmeriCorps, the national service program. They are designed to provide professional development opportunities for emerging climate protection leaders and assist communities with climate change and resiliency projects. The Task Force will discuss both collaborative and individual options to leverage the programs.

OPR, the state’s long-range planning office, is responsible for a variety of policies that impact local government, and a critical partner in climate action planning. Senior OPR staff members meet with the Task Force regularly to apprise members of their programs, tools, and guidance.

The Public Sector Climate Task Force develops effective collaborative solutions for the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from public agency operations and provides a neutral forum for city and county government agencies and special districts to learn from each other and from others about climate protection programs.

Read more about Civic Spark.

Learn more about our Public Sector Climate Task Force.

Our September Spotlight

DR. SUSAN SMARR

Kaiser Permanente Medical Center

In most cases landing on your feet is a good thing, but the first time Susan Smarr tried it she ended up in the hospital and spent the next three months in a wheelchair.

Then she made two life-changing decisions. First, no more skydiving. Second, that personal experience in the health care system drew her to a career in medicine.

Read Susan's Profile.

Articles of the Month – Innovation Districts, Two Views

“The Rise of Innovation Districts: A new geography of innovation in America” Brookings Institution
A “remarkable shift is occurring in the spatial geography of innovation” as America emerges from the Great Recession, says this probing article by Bruce Katz and Julie Wagner of the Brookings Institution.
Whereas regions like Silicon Valley, with spatially isolated corporate campuses and little emphasis on quality of life, have dominated the innovation landscape for the past 50 years, new “innovation districts” are rising that integrate work, housing and recreation by being physically compact, transit-accessible and technically wired. Read the Brookings Institution article.

“The Innovation Myth: Why you can’t engineer creativity with ‘innovation districts’”

New Republic

In this counterpoint article, Elizabeth Winkler argues that “crowding a bunch of people into a few city blocks” doesn’t necessarily foster creativity. Open office plans, a corollary to the innovation district, reduce productivity, have shown to increase blood pressure and stress levels, encourage hostility in the workplace, and reduce personal and confidential conversations, says Winkler.

Numerous studies, she writes, have confirmed that creativity deteriorates as group size increases, but in many of our most important institutions, we continue to favor the group over the individual.

Read the New Republic article.

September on “Inside Silicon Valley”

Silicon Valley education, urban design, the future of downtown San Jose and the changing face of marketing in a digital age are the topics this month on Joint Venture’s weekly public affairs radio program, “Inside Silicon Valley.”

Scheduled guests include Muhammed Chaudhry, CEO of the Silicon Valley Education Foundation (Sept. 5 & 7), Benjamin Grant, urban design program manager with SPUR (Sept. 12 & 14), Egon Terplan, regional planning director with SPUR (Sept. 19 & 21), and Brian Gregg of McKinsey & Company (Sept. 26 & 28).