The free flow of ideas creates a culture of innovation: sparking new ideas, kickstarting creative problem solving, fostering collaboration and creating synergy between related projects and ideas.

The next big splash in local food is coming from the ocean. Anna Larsen’s subscription fish box company, Siren Fish Co. keeps an eye on sustainability.

VSPOne Optical Technology Center-Sacramento opened in Folsom in November of 2014. The lab manufactures custom prescription eyewear and processes approximately 4,600 pairs of eyewear per day. Here’s how they do it: 

Much of the 8 million tons of woody debris that facilities burn each year is material that would probably burn in open fields if there wasn’t an energy-producing alternative. Since the smokestacks on a biomass plant include filtering apparatuses that can remove some pollutants from the emissions, the industry — which has helped to phase out open burning of agricultural waste — has been credited as an overall boon to California’s air quality.

Sacramento is driving the farm-to-fork movement nationwide. These efforts are led by small, local owners with community-minded restaurants. Our ability to grow this movement could be put at risk if the minimum wage is not approached in a thoughtful way. 

In the past decade, there have been a handful of instances in which older adults have opted to live on cruise ships instead of paying for traditional senior living communities. That’s how the story grew. Now, when senior living experts gather, they tell dramatic tales of lonely seniors constantly sailing the globe on cruise liners as a way of illustrating the expense of senior housing and how neglectful families can be of their aging loved ones.

As California looks for ways to reduce its carbon footprint and help curb climate change, environmental activists are questioning the integrity of the biomass industry, which burns millions of tons of woody plant matter each year to help power the state’s electric grid.   

At 34, Assemblymember Matt Dababneh is one of the youngest members of the California Legislature. During his short stint in the Assembly, Dababneh has forged a reputation as a tech-savvy, pro-business lawmaker and earned himself the chairmanship of the Assembly Banking and Finance Committee. We sat down with him recently to talk about a few of his key agenda items.

Eckert served in the U.S. Marine Corps from 1983 to 1989, traveling the world before suffering an injury to his torso during training. Upon returning to civilian life, the veteran infantryman found the skills he had gained in the marines translated to the business world.

State and local governments aren’t known for being cutting edge or tech savvy. But as the open data movement gains momentum, the private sector is becoming more empowered to usher valuable, though often archaic, institutions into the 21st century.