Small Firms See Opportunity in Mayor’s Trip
The significant business story in Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan’s trip to Asia is that the companies joining him at various stops are almost all small- to medium-sized firms and the commodity being exchanged most on the trip is knowledge.
But then, why shouldn’t that be the case? Small companies, brainpower and international engagement are the heart and soul of Southern California’s economy.
Delegations from Orange County, the Inland Empire and the entire stretch from Santa Barbara to San Diego go abroad all the time, not with a narrow agenda of making a one-time sale but to reflect to the world that this region is a crossroads of knowledge and business.
Paul Silverman, associate chancellor at UC Irvine’s health science/biotech center, has gone to Europe repeatedly to tell troubled European companies that they could do research here.
James Lin went home to Taiwan from Loma Linda University and a small company named Optivus Technology to spread the word about an advanced radiation therapy that he had helped develop here.
In a similar spirit, Robert Champion of Los Angeles’ Champion Development is joining the mayor’s visit to Taiwan to trade ideas about building retail centers in urban areas with high land prices.
Food processors Kenny Yee of Wing Hing Noodle Co. and Gina Harpur of Juanita’s Foods are going to Shanghai with the mayor’s delegation to discuss food packaging and distribution.
And Michel Welter, head of international production for Saban Entertainment, is joining the mayor in Beijing, where he already does business, to discuss further ventures as 700 newly privatized television stations in China seek programming.
The businesspeople are paying their own way--roughly $5,000 apiece--for the trip. Visiting in the mayor’s company is valuable because they get to meet high public officials in the other countries. And all of them understand the potential of overseas markets.
For most people, however, the word “trade” means only the roughly $300 billion in goods that is exported and imported to the five counties of Southern California each year. Critics have questioned why the mayor and businesspeople had to spend public money going abroad--even though Riordan paid his own way too.
The problem is that trade statistics don’t reveal the enormous value of ideas, institutions and simple interconnections that form the foundations of Southern California’s success.
Optivus Technology of Loma Linda, its Taiwan-born research scientist James Lin and the $19-million U.S. government grant Loma Linda Medical Center got to perfect proton-beam therapy for cancer victims embody those foundations. Proton-beam therapy allows precise radiation to destroy cancer cells without harming healthy tissue. It’s a breakthrough that began decades ago at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory in Berkeley. Lin worked on the proton beam at Loma Linda and became part of Optivus, a company set up to market the know-how behind the procedure that has now treated more than 3,000 patients.
“Lin’s hope was to bring the technology to his homeland, Taiwan,” says John Slater, founder and president of Optivus. And Lin has done that, recently securing a $70-million letter of intent to buy the Optivus system from Chang Gong Memorial Hospital in Taipei and expressions of interest from three other hospitals.
“It’s a typical example of institutions and individuals achieving results in California,” says Silverman, a scientist who worked on the original proton-beam research at Lawrence Berkeley. Later in a long career, Silverman served as director of science at Beckman Instruments of Fullerton and helped organize the health science center now being built at UC Irvine.
In that connection, he has attracted interest from European pharmaceutical companies who see in Southern California an opportunity to do genetic research that they have difficulty doing in their own countries.
“Legislation fostered by the Green parties of Europe has severely hobbled DNA research there,” Silverman explains. “The universities cannot teach at the cutting edge or produce students with the knowledge.”
So companies from Sweden, Germany, Switzerland, Italy and other countries support start-up firms in Orange County, where doors are open to ideas and people.
It may seem a long step down from advanced research to Juanita’s Foods’ menudo, but Harpur is going to Shanghai to see how foods are distributed in China and what her Wilmington-based firm may offer. “We could offer U.S. manufacturing for a Chinese food processor at our Department of Agriculture-approved plant near the harbor,” she says.
Yee of Wing Hing thinks he can offer know-how to China, even in noodles. “U.S. preparation, packaging and distribution is more developed,” Yee says.
Similarly, real estate developers and TV producers in this highly developed society bring valuable expertise to other countries. And the business relationships that ensue can be long-term and open-ended.
In fact, the only weak point in this attractive picture may be back home in Southern California, where entrepreneurs often feel disconnected and lonely in the sprawling landscape.
That’s why it’s significant that Harpur and Yee are founding members of the Food Industry Roundtable, a grouping of small-business owners formed to trade experiences and advice and bring collective beefs to City Hall.
It’s a need that many businesspeople in Southern California share--witness the current rage among technology entrepreneurs to connect under such banners as Tech Coast in Orange County, Digital Coast in Los Angeles County, Inland Empire Technology Entrepreneurs in San Bernardino and an Economic Corridor linking 40 universities from the Inland Empire to Santa Barbara that some Pasadena engineers are trying to organize.
Such efforts, however much they are greeted by condescending smiles from Silicon Valley or envious places like New York, are praiseworthy. They recognize that when you connect the dots, this region’s small companies and their know-how are a formidable economic force indeed.
