GFCC Releases Report from the San Diego Study Trip
San Diego’s innovation ecosystem was not inherited. It was built by deliberate action through generations of planned investment on infrastructure and talent development. That is the central finding of the GFCC’s latest report, San Diego Study Trip: University and Research Leadership Forum – Event Report, produced with its member UC San Diego after the July 22–23 study trip and now available for download.
The two-day program brought together industry, government, and academic leaders from nine countries to examine how universities act as growth engines of the innovation economy and reshape the regions they serve.
The report traces how the San Diego ecosystem took shape:
the persistence it took to found UC San Diego;
a bet on workforce over employer incentives;
a sustained effort that grew annual venture investment from roughly $1 billion to $4–5 billion.
It closes with takeaways for universities, regions, and companies. These range from funding technology transfer through core budgets rather than licensing returns to treating partnerships as multi-year relationships rather than contracts.
San Diego was the third stop in the URLF’s current phase, after Birmingham in 2024 and Lisbon in 2025. The program included a fireside chat with Chancellor Pradeep K. Khosla and site visits to the Qualcomm Institute, Illumina, and the DIII-D National Fusion Facility.
The URLF journey continues in Tsukuba, Japan, on February 14-18.
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