The Milken Institute’s fourth annual California Summit provided an opportunity to assemble prominent state leaders in business, policy, philanthropy, and academia to address the issues facing the world’s seventh-largest economy and one of the most diverse populations on the globe. The Summit focused on four key areas that define many of the challenges facing the state: the business climate; the need for opportunities in finance and access to capital, including financial technology; investment in the state’s infrastructure, particularly involving water; and the need to maintain and grow the culture of innovation.

The Summit’s program addressed the challenge of spurring innovation that is socially, economically, and politically sustainable while planning for growth. (View a list of sessions) Along with identifying the most crucial steps that California’s leadership can take to ensure continued growth, the Summit provided the California Center with a to-do list as our speakers and attendees debated and ultimately defined actionable recommendations. As part of the California Center’s engagement with stakeholders and public officials, we have focused on developing a more thorough understanding of the issues discussed at the Summit and on creating a plan for implementing many of the recommendations over the coming year. We aim to facilitate change in areas we have the capacity to address and, in other cases, raise awareness of proposed solutions on a broader scope.