Staying Competitive:
The Bottom Line

California's industries need workers with specific skill sets, and when these skills aren't readily available in the workforce, industries often devise solutions to produce them (e.g. the case study of the San Bernardino WIB). But the underlying strength of the workforce lies in its ability to continually learn and adapt. Workers need to be learning, but they also need to be learning how to learn.

WIBs can provide focus to this process. As conveners, they can bring together the disparate institutions and programs necessary to foster effective learning programs and environments. As analysts, they can collect regional workforce data and make information from state and national sources accessible to local industries. WIBs are in unique positions to broker arrangements between companies, higher education institutions, government and non-profit organizations to most effectively develop these core skill sets, meeting the immediate needs of local industries while laying the groundwork for potential changes in the future. WIBs can bring this message home as the community voice, educating the public, industries, and political leaders alike as to the best way to support and enhance the local workforce. And their efforts can bring a coherent strategy to building capacity, enabling regions to better provide for their own workforce needs, lessening the need for industries to look elsewhere for recruiting or even outsourcing.

In pursuing these goals, California's WIBs their partners will be aligning themselves with the state's strong cultural history of science, innovation, and entrepreneurship.