A conversation with Christine Lu on the backstory of America Innovates. Produced by Sean Young.

Full Transcription available here: https://app.box.com/s/5utn77oqcy87r6364lvg41s26n3sgrun

Excerpt from Episode One: America Innovates with Christine Lu

Sean: [00:01:02] What is America Innovates?

Christine: [00:01:04] American Innovates is focused on accelerating possibilities in America through innovation America innovates is an initiative aimed at looking beyond Silicon Valley to facilitate new innovation hubs in the U.S. that are what we say inclusive of the local communities. And so in knowing that, combined with the trend that we're now seeing there is a lot of innovation now starting to happen outside of Silicon Valley. Here in Los Angeles, we are a perfect example of that. What has happened in recent years as startups started moving out of San Francisco and started settling or starting up here in Los Angeles, the capital, the money followed. The big companies also followed. You see Google, Facebook, YouTube all have offices here. And as a result of that it really started to change the makeup and the character I think of Los Angeles whereas before it wasn't known for being a hub of innovation. Now, it is right there outside of Silicon Valley as one of the major up and coming and coming cities.

Sean: [00:02:11] So, America innovates wants to be on the forefront of this new trend.

Christine: [00:02:15] Well, no not necessarily because thats a very Silicon Valley mentality. What America innovates wants to do is accelerate the trend in the cities outside of Silicon Valley in a way that is inclusive of communities.

Sean: [00:02:29] And how are you going to do that. Tell me a little bit about how you plan to do that.

Christine: [00:02:33] Well, accelerating possibilities we kind of start as broad as we can because we look at what's possible if you change the dynamic for how these cities are approaching innovation many times what happens is people are so focused on attracting the money to go straight into the startups or the startups can grow and then before you know it you have like a Facebook come out of ...or you know in the case of Los Angeles you have Snapchat. And in the process of doing that and in the process of these companies raising five million dollars at first and then $20 million and then $300 million. What we forget when we're pointing at hyper focusing on the innovation part is it absolutely is having an impact on the community around it. More talent gets attracted which is great. More jobs are created which is great but what kind of jobs? What kind of talent are coming in and who is it displacing? And so what we've noticed is the issue that you have in San Francisco, we don't necessarily want to see a repeat of the extremes of that happen as different cities across the country follow that model.