In the San Francisco Bay Area’s high-tech hub, the economic downturn caused jobs, patents, and venture capital investment to decline in 2009, according to the “2010 Index of Silicon Valley” study released this month. The survey also shows office vacancy at its highest rate since 1988, as the focus has shifted from software to green energy, the media, biotech, and medical devices.

Faced with California’s budget crisis and soaring unemployment rates, the state’s Business, Transportation and Housing Agency (BTH) has launched the California Innovation Hub (iHUB) initiative, a program designed to enhance the state’s competitiveness on a national and global scale by stimulating partnerships, economic development, and job creation around specific research clusters.

The six inaugural iHub members are Orange County, Sacramento, Coachella Valley, Northgate, i-GATE (Innovation for Green Advanced Transportation Excellence), and San Francisco Biotech.

The main component of the iHUB program is collaboration. By building a network of cutting-edge companies, forward-thinking organizations, and research institutions across the state, California will benefit from greater exposure, smarter partnerships, more jobs and a fusion of new ideas that would establish the state as a global innovation powerhouse.

The lead organization for the Orange County iHub is OCTANe, a nonprofit organization that fuels the area’s technology sector through educational programming, business acceleration, job connections, and university partnerships.

OCTANe felt the impact of the recession last year as the amount of sponsorships decreased. But at the same time, the organization’s memberships increased, and the unemployment rate created a demand for job support and financial strains motivated universities to turn to OCTANe to help license technology.

I really believe that technology and innovation will ultimately be what helps the state recover from the economic recession. California needs that more than anybody.

View a previously written post by Mouli Cohen about innovation in California