Report Shows San Diego’s Innovation Economy Gaining Strength Through June

A comprehensive snapshot of San Diego’s innovation economy shows that 76 technology startups were formed during the three months that ended June 30, a nearly 20 percent increase over the 64 startups established during the same quarter last year.

Counting the 70 new tech companies formed during the first quarter, a total of 146 startups sprouted here during the first half of 2011, according to the latest Connect Innovation Report, which covers innovation activity in the San Diego area during the second quarter of 2011. The full report is available here.

Connect’s innovation report also highlights rising tech employment, a three-fold increase in the total value of M&A deals involving tech companies, and a historic high for patent applications. The report was prepared by Connect, the nonprofit group supporting San Diego innovation and entrepreneurship.

Taken as a whole, the indicators suggest that economic activity was improving for thousands of local life sciences, technology, and defense companies during the first half of 2011. For example, the 146 new companies founded during the first six months of 2011 marked a nearly 48 percent jump over the 99 new companies formed during the first half of 2010.

But the encouraging vital signs measured in the report were taken before this summer, when U.S. markets were unsettled by a variety of political and economic setbacks, both foreign and domestic.

Those broader economic concerns could have been a factor in a nationwide survey of CEO confidence conducted during the third quarter by Vistage International. The survey, which Connect included in its full report, found that small-business CEOs anticipate a slowdown in the pace of economic growth amid record-high economic uncertainty. Generally speaking, that means small companies are more cautious about making investments and slower to hire new workers. The September survey of 1,710 small business CEOs resulted in

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Author: Bruce V. Bigelow

In Memoriam: Our dear friend Bruce V. Bigelow passed away on June 29, 2018. He was the editor of Xconomy San Diego from 2008 to 2018. Read more about his life and work here. Bruce Bigelow joined Xconomy from the business desk of the San Diego Union-Tribune. He was a member of the team of reporters who were awarded the 2006 Pulitzer Prize in National Reporting for uncovering bribes paid to San Diego Republican Rep. Randy “Duke” Cunningham in exchange for special legislation earmarks. He also shared a 2006 award for enterprise reporting from the Society of Business Editors and Writers for “In Harm’s Way,” an article about the extraordinary casualty rate among employees working in Iraq for San Diego’s Titan Corp. He has written extensively about the 2002 corporate accounting scandal at software goliath Peregrine Systems. He also was a Gerald Loeb Award finalist and National Headline Award winner for “The Toymaker,” a 14-part chronicle of a San Diego start-up company. He takes special satisfaction, though, that the series was included in the library for nonfiction narrative journalism at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. Bigelow graduated from U.C. Berkeley in 1977 with a degree in English Literature and from the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in 1979. Before joining the Union-Tribune in 1990, he worked for the Associated Press in Los Angeles and The Kansas City Times.