RIVERSIDE - Inyokern and the Indian Wells Valley have long been a hub of innovation.

    On Tuesday, Inyokern popped up on the grid as Gov. Jerry Brown's Office of Economic and Business Development (GOBiz) publicly broadcast the area as one of its newest innovation hubs.

    It is the first expansion of the network in three years.

    Inyokern and three other areas join the 12 iHubs already established. Each iHub focuses on an area or discipline like biomass fuel or aerospace.

    State leaders and directors from GOBiz spoke about the need to grow California's economy, especially as it moved out of economic recession.

    Established in 2010, the iHubs are tools that allows regions in California to more actively pursue development of new businesses and ideas. The concept is collaborative in nature, with organizations pooling resources together or offering space as business incubators for new technologies.

    Kish Rajan, director of GOBiz, said the iHubs were a push forward, as is incorporating them into California's law by way of Assembly Bill 250, authored by Assemblyman Chris Holden (D - Pasadena).

    "This is another great day for the California economy," Rajan said. "While Washington, D.C. might be stuck in the mud, we are moving California's economy forward and we are not looking back."

    Rajan said that AB 250 and the package of bills Brown signed on Oct. 4 "constitutes the most aggressive business approach coming out of Sacramento."

    Eileen Shibley, director of the China Lake Alliance and coordinator for the California Unmanned Systems Portal, first unveiled the concept of the iDEA Hub in April.

    "This gets the name Inyokern out there and having it associated with innovation," Shibley said Tuesday. "I spoke with many people here and found that they had no idea where Inyokern was."

    She added that having Inyokern and the region dubbed an iHub would benefit the Cal UAS Portal's efforts in securing a test site designation for the Federal Aviation Administration's Unmanned Aerial Systems initiative.

    Shibley chats with Inyokern Airport General Manager Scott Seymour (right) and Inyokern Airport Airfield Operations Manager Rochelle Caravalho prior to a ceremony at Riverside County Adminstration Building Photo by Jack Barnwell

"If we get the designation, we are going to be able to take advantage of tapping into other iHubs across the state," Shibley said.

    The Inyokern led iDEA hub will focus on aerospace, defense and energy-based technologies, with the goal to incubate and foster new developments and job growth in the region.

    Holden, the Pasadena senator, said that the iHubs represent an asset to California's economy by networking and taking advantage of every resource in its economic arsenal, whether it was developing green energy or tapping into institutes of higher learning.

    "Clearly, we are coming out of a recession that has hurt so many in the business sector and we have seen manufacturing leave our state, so we must be creative," Holden said. "It's time to look to the future of what California can be and how we can take the resources of this great state and harness it and let grow."

Inyokern's iDEA

    The Inyokern iHub - christened the iDEA iHub - encompasses not only the Indian Wells Valley, but Kern, Inyo and Ventura counties as well.

    The idea is fitting given the area's long history of breakthroughs in aerospace and defense technologies. With Naval Air Weapons Station, China Lake, NASA Dryden Flight Research Center and other regional partners all in the same area, the new iHub has the potential to tap into the brainpower of 7,000 engineers, scientists and defense orientated contractors.

    During the ceremony unveiling the newly codified iHub, Shibley capitalized the moment by explaining what the iDEA iHub would mean for the region and what it represents for the state as a whole.

    "We are excited about the opportunities that the iHub program represents," Shibley said. "We have a sense of what it means to get to this point."

    Shibley added that Inyokern's location made it ideal as a place to spearhead the regional iHub.

"We are in the middle of nowhere and we see that as a plus," Shibley said.

    In the defense area, she said that the iDEA iHub can cultivate the resources and brainpower of NAWS China Lake's weapons division, as well as its partners at Point Mugu in Ventura County.

    "We have some of the largest applications in both energy and defense around," Shibley said.

    In terms of the cultivation of the aerospace arena, Shibley said that Inyokern's location within 12,000 square miles of restricted airspace makes the area a prime location for research and development.

    "In addition to some of the first breakthroughs in aerospace industry, we are moving and transitioning to an arena where we are doing research in both the areas of manned and unmanned systems," Shibley said.

    "We see our innovation hub as a wonderful opportunity to share with others some of the pioneering work in that area."

    The iDEA iHub would place Inyokern and the region on the map at the state level, something Scott Seymour, general manager of Inyokern Airport, said would be beneficial.

    "Eileen has done a wonderful job in working on this," Seymour said at the ceremony on Tuesday. "This will put Inyokern on the map a little bit more than it already is."