San Diego’s innovation economy showed relatively strong economic growth during the first three months of 2012, according to an in-depth study released by Connect, a San Diego nonprofit group that supports technology entrepreneurship.
But the Connect study also highlights some potential concerns, including a sharp drop in the number of software companies that were started in San Diego in the first quarter, and a significant decrease in federal research grant awards for basic biomedical research.
The backdrop for Connect’s latest quarterly report is an encouraging forecast that San Diego’s overall economy will grow by 2.2 percent in 2012, according to the National University System Institute for Policy Research. If that prediction holds true, San Diego’s gross domestic product would rise to $184.5 billion in 2012 (from $177.5 billion in 2011)—the strongest growth the region has seen in six years.
Nevertheless, San Diego’s general economic recovery remains sluggish. After adding 36,000 jobs in 2010 and 2011—and if another 21,000 jobs materialize in 2012 as predicted—the total number of jobs added would still be just over half of those lost in the recession of 2007-09.
The Connect Innovation Report tracks
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.
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