Technology : O.C. Fails to Make Business Week List of Regional Hot Spots

Even with the recession, it seems hope persists that high-tech industries can generate new Silicon Valleys, or regional “hot spots.�

In the Oct. 19 issue of Business Week, the magazine’s cover story focuses on 15 regions where particular technology industries, from telecommunications to medical instruments, have concentrated and generated new jobs.

Orange County isn’t on the list.

Even so, the county features more than 79,000 technology-related jobs, including at least 30,000 non-defense technology jobs; Fortune 500 computer-related companies such as Western Digital Corp. and AST Research Inc. in the Irvine Spectrum; a burgeoning biotechnology industry; cooperative research with UC Irvine; and hundreds of smaller companies developing new software and medical technologies.

Instead, Business Week focused on developing regions, often far smaller in terms of jobs relative to Orange County, with handy nicknames like the Golden Triangle in San Diego (11,000 jobs); Optics Valley in Tucson (1,000 jobs); Boomtown Boise (14,300 jobs); Laser Lane in Orlando (5,000 jobs); Software Valley in Provo, Utah (12,000 jobs); and Biomed Mountains in Salt Lake City (8,000 jobs).

“I think it’s sheer oversight,� said Roger W. Johnson, chief executive of Western Digital. “Orange County has emerged as a major technology center, and people around the country are aware of that.�

The magazine says high-tech growth corridors always share some characteristics. It cites cooperation among governments, universities, big corporations, banks and entrepreneurial businesses to form a grass roots industrial policy.

Perhaps Orange County is overshadowed by its declining defense industry or the flight of manufacturers to low-cost, less regulated regions such as Texas. Orange County might also boast its diversified economy isn’t reliant upon the slings and arrows of a particular industry.

Or perhaps it needs a name for its hot spot in the Irvine Spectrum, which at its founding in 1984 was among 30 business parks around the country that laid claim to the title of the next Silicon Valley, the nickname bestowed on concentration of chip makers and electronics firms around the San Jose area.

Indeed, several years ago the Richardson Chamber of Commerce advertised its own hot spot north of Dallas as Telecom Corridor, a moniker that Business Week used for the concentration of the telecommunications industry even though the area is better known as the heart of oil country.