Education Series That Will Provide Long Beach Entrepreneurs the Tools and Skills Needed to Develop & Launch Green Tech Businesses Advances to The My LA2050 Activation Challenge Finals

Long Beach Downtown Development Corporation
Non-profit organization

The Sustainable Tech Intellectual Property Education Series focuses on providing the tools and skills to develop & launch green tech businesses, file potential IP and scale qualified businesses.

What does your organization do?
Our mission is to cultivate, preserve and promote a healthy, safe and prosperous Downtown.

Please describe the activation your organization seeks to launch.
STIPES is focused on providing the tools needed to develop & launch green technology businesses, file patents & other intellectual property protections to scale businesses. This activation focuses on minority & women-owned firms, startups with the goals of generating IP filings, driving venture capital investment, and creating jobs.Through our partnership with CSULB’s Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship we will retain more graduates from our local higher education institutions.

Which of the CREATE metrics will your activation impact?​

• Minority- and women-owned firms
• Number of high-growth startups
• Patents per capita

Will your proposal impact any other LA2050 goal categories?

• LA is the best place to LEARN
• LA is the best place to CONNECT
• LA is the healthiest place to LIVE

In what areas of Los Angeles will you be directly working?

• South Bay
• Long Beach

How will your activation mobilize Angelenos?

• Trainings and/or in-person engagements
• Create new tools or technologies for greater civic/political engagement
• Encourage businesses to change practices
• Increase participation in political processes
• Influence individual behavior
• Increase donations to organizations and causes
• STIPES will promote entrepreneurship specific to generating green/sustainable technology patents in partnership with our California State University Long Beach, Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. This program also complements the DLBA’s (partner) ongoing Entrepreneurship Education Series, Woman Owned Business Accelerator, 1 Million Cups, and Small Business Grant programs.

Describe in greater detail how your activation will make LA the best place to CREATE?
STIPES is a partnership between the Downtown Long Beach Alliance (DLBA), the Long Beach Downtown Development Corporation, and the Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship (IIE) at California State University Long Beach. The series is focused on providing the tools and skills needed to identify and file patents and other intellectual property protections related to green/sustainable technologies, launching scalable businesses promoting entrepreneurship with California State University Long Beach’s Institute for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. This program complements the DLBA’s ongoing Entrepreneurship Education Series, Woman Owned Business Accelerator, 1 Million Cups, Google workshop, and Small Business Grant programs. The IIE will provide educational content and a certificate of completion to those who complete the entire program as we organically identify and support minority and women-owned business innovation in Long Beach. The STIPES initiative provides multiple week training workshops in partnership with IIE that focus on identifying the requirements to file patents, protect copyrights and trademarks and launching successful entrepreneurial businesses in Long Beach.

Typical program outline:

   Cost to Attend: FREE

   Curriculum schedule:

      Week 1: Idea to Patent, Copyright or Trademark Filing for Entrepreneurs Part 1

      Week 2: Idea to Patent, Copyright or Trademark Filing for Entrepreneurs Part 2

      Week 3: The Value of a Business Plan

      Week 4: Your Marketing Plan

      Week 5: Financial Aspects of Your Business: Accounting & Financing

      Week 6: Where to Locate Your Business

      Week 7: Legal and HR Questions

      Week 8: May 12, *PitchFest, Small Business Grant Awards,and a certificate ceremony

At the conclusion of the STIPES series, we’ll host a Pitch competition to promote applications from STIPES attendees competing for Small Business Grants that are targeted to support the leasing of office space, reducing barriers of entry to open a business within the City of Long Beach, with awards supporting Women and Minority Owned businesses. This effort will support the City of Long Beach 10-year Economic Development Blueprint that encourages inclusion and diversity in growing the Long Beach economy.

How will your activation engage Angelenos to make LA the best place to CREATE
Downtown Long Beach (in the shadows of LA) is the only waterfront downtown between San Diego and San Francisco. As the creative class jobs continue to expand from Santa Monica South to downtown LB we need to continue to support and expand our organic entrepreneurial business ecosystem. The Ports of LA and Long Beach have recently committed over $14 billion in green technology investment and CSULB has made substantial investments in Sustainable Energy & Environmental research in partnerships with The Port of Long Beach. As consumer and business efficiency requires sustainability, our goal is that Long Beach leads the way as a sustainable city. The IIE will build the bridge with the intellectual and human resources from CSULB and the expertise from local institutions. This will lead to a strong partnership to grow the green tech sector in the community, enhancing Long Beach’s status as the premier sustainable city and a global model for others to follow.

Please explain how you will define and measure success for your activation.​
Our focus is on creative industries such as developing new green technologies, creating platforms and apps to generate efficiencies in energy and resource use, expanding the design sector, all of which are linked to the three pillars of sustainability - people, planet and profit. Examples of measures of success include the following:

    # Businesses attended by the creative industries

    # of new creative class businesses created

    # of jobs created through the program

    # of Minority- and women-owned firms created

    # of Patents created through the workshop

    # of copyrights and trademarks generated

    # of CSULB Students attending programs

    # of CSULB graduates remaining in LA county after graduation

How much matching venture capital investment is awarded

Where do you hope this activation or your organization will be in five years?
When a college graduate/student/entrepreneur thinks about where they can find support to launch their idea our expectation is they think about Long Beach first, due to the resources and success of prior entrepreneurial launches supported through our business expansion, attraction, and retention programming. Expanding the creative community to support the development of a truly sustainable city that focuses on the people, planet and profit!

About the My LA2050 Activation Challenge
This is an open call for ideas to activate 100,000 Angelenos to make Los Angeles the best place to learn, create, play, connect, and live. A total of $1M will be awarded among five organizations—one per goal category—to implement their ideas to engage Angelenos. Each organization will receive a total of $200,000 over two years to support their efforts.

The activations should aim to engage Angelenos to make a specific, tangible impact on one of the LA2050 goals and metrics by 2020. The activations can use a variety of engagement strategies to create progress, including but not limited to policy advocacy, community organizing, volunteering, buycotts/boycotts, digital activism, or use of civic tech.

LA2050 will commit to a two-year partnership leveraging its resources, assets, and networks to help the activations succeed. Together, the winning organizations, LA2050, and Angelenos will produce five major wins for the region that will change the course of our future.

Voting begins June 19th!