Wednesday, January 6, 2021
Reflections on 2020: Andy Wilson, Alliance for SoCal Innovation
Every year, we feature the year end reflections of founders, CEOs, investors, sposors, and others in Southern California's high tech community. We've been posting these throughout the next two weeks. Today, we have Andy Wilson, Executive Director of the Alliance for SoCal Innovation (www.alliancesocal.org). You will be able to get to all of these posts on our 2020 reflections here.
What was the biggest news for you/your company this year?As you may recall the Alliance’s mission is to elevate the region as a global leader in innovation, technology & entrepreneurship. We do that by acting as a smart super connector bringing together key ecosystem stakeholders, so we can work together in a unified fashion. We engage and collaborate with over two dozen universities (including all the SoCal UC campuses), two dozen leading corporations (including Disney, Kaiser, Edison) and several dozen leading SoCal ecosystem organizations like Octane, LAVA, Connect, CLA-OC, Innovate Pasadena, BioscienceLA, as well as investors and accelerators such as Techstars, Starburst, and many others. Despite numerous pivots we made to adapt to the pandemic, we launched several new programs that utilize virtual meeting platforms and were able to attract new prominent underwriting partners such as Verizon who sponsored the launch of our new digital platform that enables diverse micro-communities to gather virtually and promote their unique innovation assets. In short, we accelerated our virtual and digital capabilities which has enhanced our ability to unify and elevate the massive and diverse SoCal region.
It's been a tough year for many due to the pandemic; how have you or your company adapted to the business environment?
The massive geographic footprint of the region has always been a limiting factor in our work as a Super Connector, but we soon realized that virtual platforms actually allow us to more effectively bring people together than solely relying on live in-person convenings. While the attendee interactions might be more limited due to Zoom, we found our leadership roundtables, conferences, and showcases all showed significant increases (50 - 100%) in participation. Despite the macro challenges, we were able to significantly increase our reach and engagement across the region. That is not to suggest we won’t return to in person convenings when safe to do so but, we’ll definitely move to a hybrid model using a thoughtful combination of the various approaches.
What was the biggest lesson you learned this year?
I know it is cliche but indeed necessity is the mother of invention. I guess we were a bit old school in our thinking that if we couldn’t be in a specific geography in person, then we weren’t adequately committed to including them in our work. It is now clear that effective engagement can take all forms. This is particularly important as we embrace our role as the region’s super connector - given the scale and scope of the region we’d never succeed if we were limited to in person engagement. One of our most promising new programs is the Strategic University Research Expo (SURE) in partnership with Biocom where we curate highly focused virtual demo days featuring select university research -- it was only conceived when we were liberated from the in-person model.
What are you most looking forward to in the technology/startup world in 2021?Despite my enthusiasm for the benefits and potential of working virtually, I have to confess that it isn’t quite the same as interacting with people in 3 dimensions - something is clearly lost. So I am looking forward to the safe and gradual return to in-person gatherings. For the tech/startup ecosystem in SoCal, I am looking forward to continued momentum in addressing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the workforce and support for emerging entrepreneurs. I am hopeful that 2020 was an inflection point and 2021 will see more shared prosperity for the diverse voices in our community especially as we look to recover from this devastating pandemic. We believe that diversity is the region’s superpower and it’s time for us to lead the world in this area.
Andy Wilson is a well known leader in the Southern Californian innovation ecosystem and has started, led or invested in more than two dozen tech start-ups. In addition to leading the Alliance as its Executive Director, he is vice mayor for the City of Pasadena and is a founder of Innovate Pasadena (www.innovatepasadena.org), which is dedicated to advancing the Eastside of Los Angeles as a vibrant innovation center for deep tech. Previously, as founder of Momentum Ventures, an early stage tech accelerator and venture fund, he personally led more than a half dozen SoCal tech start-ups and invested in almost a dozen others. He previously held C-level roles at Overture Services/Yahoo!, RiverOne, Academy123, Bowne & Co and RR Donnelley & Sons.