November 21, 2023 – The Joint Venture board of directors elected Brent C. Harris to its body. Harris is VP of Augmented Reality at Meta. Harris is focused on how to build the next mobile computing platform for people and businesses across the globe and was named an “expert in international regulation” by Wired. “I am enthusiastic about taking on this role at Joint Venture to contribute towards tackling crucial economic and societal challenges in Silicon Valley and to help grow the organization," said Harris. 
November 27, 2023 - In an opinion piece in the Mercury News, David Witkowski, Joint Venture's, Executive Director of Civic Technologies, says the California Public Utilities Commission seems to be hesitating and giving undue consideration to people opposed to technical progress. "...it is being held back by a minority of naysayers who are opposed to technical progress. It’s time for the commission to move our state’s communications network forward to the 21st century."
November 20, 2023 - Joint Venture’s Institute has completed a report in partnership with the University of Washington School of Social Work, Center for Women’s Welfare which models guaranteed basic income (GBI) scenarios. Supported by a 2022-23 grant from the County of Santa Clara with additional support from Silicon Valley Community Foundation, Modeling Guaranteed Basic Income & Household Income Adequacy in Santa Clara County examines how GBI programs can help move families out of poverty and into economic security.
November 27, 2023 - With one of the highest priced housing markets in the country, Silicon Valley’s median home sale price shot up to an all-time high of $1.53 million in 2022. The hottest Silicon Valley housing markets this summer were Sunnyvale, Santa Clara, and Fremont. Is demand changing the demographics within those sub-regional areas? Joint Venture’s research arm, partnered with Unacast to tap into aggregated mobile device location data. The analysis offers zip-code-level insights on characteristics ranging from age to poverty rate to migration patterns. 
November 27, 2023 - Joint Venture’s Institute for Regional Studies, recently joined with the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits and Thrive Alliance to produce A Landscape of Change and Impact, a report on issues confronting nonprofits in San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties. The groups produced the report to support the nonprofit community and its partners by offering an overview of organizational health, workplace practices, racial justice and equity, and strategic alliances.
November 27, 2023 - Carl Sagan once said, “Anything else you’re interested in is not going to happen if you can’t breathe the air and drink the water. Don’t sit this one out. Do something." Barry Vesser, COO of the Climate Center, has taken this sentiment to heart. Barry leads The Climate Center’s program and policy development and implementation teams. Barry moved around a great deal as a young man and served in the Peace Corps in the Philippines where he was inspired by the sense of community and kindness that was expressed by people of modest means. 
November 20, 2023 - Mark your calendar now for the 2024 State of the Valley Conference to be held Friday, March 1 at San Jose State University. Count on the most recent data on the state of the Bay Area and illuminating analysis by experts who will break down the numbers.
Statement by Russell Hancock, president and CEO, Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network
San Jose, Calif, January 19, 2004 - By all accounts, the burning question about Silicon Valley – will it come back from the rubble of the dot.com bubble -- has been answered: Yes, but the Valley will look different, and we must invest in the skills of our people to prepare for new jobs.
We are poised for another recovery in a long history of economic rebounds in our dynamic region sparked by underlying innovative strength from a creative and determined population and business community.
The data in the 2004 Index of Silicon Valley, released today by Joint Venture, says that after three painful years, “we are now seeing the early signs of yet another Silicon Valley reinvention”. Although it is slower than we would like it to be, we are seeing clear evidence that the Valley’s future is taking shape.
But now there is another question: a comeback to what?
While job loss has slowed, changes are taking place in the structure of our region’s economy from dominance in information technology to new industries. In particular, the Index finds that “employment gains are taking place in some high-wage occupational clusters, employment is growing in the Health Services cluster, and the Biomedical cluster is becoming more concentrated in Silicon Valley than in the nation.”
Employment in the high-wage occupational clusters in Silicon Valley, the Index reports, is 25% of our total employment compared to 13% nationally. In our most concentrated clusters, average wages are more than $80,000. And our higher skills give us comparative advantage over other regions.
A Special Analysis in this year’s Index examines “the unique and changing occupational structure of our Valley.” It describes how we compare to the nation, what occupational clusters are growing and declining here, what makes this structure unique, and how our occupational clusters have shifted over time.”
We need, therefore, to understand what our occupational changes mean for future jobs; prepare our workforce for these occupations to stay competitive in the global economy; recognize the importance of career progression from low-level to mid-level to high-level occupations; and help the workforce to make the transition.
Four occupation groupings are highly concentrated in Silicon Valley relative to the U.S., the Index reports. These are innovation R&D; professional services; headquarters; and technical production.
Another six groups are not as highly concentrated but important: administration; installation, repair and production; sales, marketing and distribution; health and human services; education and training; and personal services.
The Index makes clear that we also have significant employment with mid-level wages. The Special Analysis concludes that our region “is not a two-tiered hourglass economy with high-wage research and professional services and low-wage personal services. Our region also has a majority of employment in mid-wage occupational groupings.”
To promote an innovative economy in the future, our region will need to broaden prosperity by retraining our existing workforce to transition to higher-skilled jobs. Our global competitiveness will depend on investing in the skills of our people.
There are other challenges, as well, and Joint Venture announced four Initiatives last fall to address several of them.
One is designed to help sustain our economic recovery. We must have structural reforms in the state’s budget process to provide a strong foundation and a healthier business climate for more good jobs, broader individual prosperity, and a better quality of life. We must seize this moment to make basic changes in our government, which can help maintain our environment for innovation and entrepreneurship.
To this end, Joint Venture has joined with the Bay Area Economic Forum to pursue a non-partisan, Bay Area effort in Sacramento providing a community-wide voice involving leaders from business, labor, education, community organizations, and local government. We want to promote the idea of working together to find solutions and not engage in finger pointing or pushing narrow agendas.
The other initiatives were organized to help accelerate the convergence of biotechnology, information technology and nanotechnology; expand the use of information technology to improve health, education and transportation; and build relationships among technology leaders in Silicon Valley and other regions of the world for mutual economic benefit.
