By Dayle M. Smith, Ph.D.
Dean, LMU College of Business Administration
The most consequential challenges facing Los Angeles—and the world—do not fit neatly within the boundaries of government, business, academia, or the nonprofit sector. Neither do the solutions.
As I prepare to teach a module on social impact in our DBA program, I have been reflecting on the conversations and ideas that emerged from The Convening: Tri-Sector Innovation, hosted last month by LMU College of Business Administration in partnership with the World Trade Center Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce. The experience reinforced a simple but too-often-forgotten truth: No single sector can solve today’s challenges alone.
Innovation happens when we bring different perspectives to the same table—when government officials listen alongside corporate leaders, nonprofit organizations work alongside academics, and community voices help shape solutions alongside global institutions. It is in those intersections, where expertise, experience, and interests collide, that new possibilities emerge.
That was the spirit of The World Comes to L.A., a week of three conferences that brought leaders from around the world together to explore the future of Jesuit business education, cross-sector collaboration and innovation, and strategies for creating lasting social impact. The Convening brought together a group of people who do not come together nearly often enough: government officials, members of the consular corps, nonprofit and community-based leaders, corporate executives, and academics from across Los Angeles and around the world.
Led by facilitator Jens Molbak, founder of Coinstar and now leading NewImpact, we focused on three issues that will help define the future of Southern California: healthcare, workforce development in the age of artificial intelligence, and sustainable cities.
Too often, we think innovation means inventing something new. The tri-sector model suggests a different possibility: innovation can emerge by recombining resources, capabilities, and knowledge that already exist. As Molbak framed it, we create impact by combining and repurposing resources at scale, not necessarily by creating entirely new ones. Los Angeles is not short on talent, expertise, capital, land, technology, or civic commitment. What we often lack is a mechanism to assemble those assets across institutional boundaries.
This insight surfaced repeatedly throughout the day.
Healthcare, for example, was reframed in our discussions not as a system that simply responds to illness, but as an ecosystem that promotes well-being. Ideas such as workforce development investments, AI-enabled care delivery, community recreation spaces, and health education became more powerful because they were considered together rather than separately. What emerged was a vision that connected health plans, educational institutions, local government, technology providers, and community organizations around shared outcomes.
This same shift in perspective shaped the discussion around workforce development and artificial intelligence. Employers described skills gaps. Universities discussed curriculum innovation. Community organizations highlighted barriers to access and inclusion. Individually, each perspective was valuable. Together, they revealed how interconnected these sectors truly are, and how those intersections reveal opportunities that none could have identified alone.
The conversation led to a broader question: How do we prepare people not merely to enter the workforce, but to thrive within it? Through discussion, the answer was clear: education, employers, and community partners must design talent pathways together, not sequentially.
Perhaps nowhere was the power of tri-sector thinking more evident than in the discussion on sustainable cities. Housing affordability, climate resilience, transportation, workforce development, public trust, and economic growth are often treated as separate challenges administered by separate entities. Yet participants consistently found intersections. Underutilized land could address housing shortages. Excess materials could become community assets. Environmental investments could create workforce opportunities. Public policy could unlock private investment. Solutions emerged not from staying within sector boundaries, but from crossing them.
The recurring lesson was that innovative solutions are often hiding in plain sight. A resource underutilized in one sector may be exactly what another sector needs. A challenge faced by one organization may mirror a challenge being solved elsewhere. The breakthrough comes when those connections are recognized—and when the people who can act on them are brought into the same room.
That is why the most valuable asset at the convening was neither funding nor technology. It was the diversity of perspectives—and the opportunity to connect them.
The tri-sector model provides the methodology. But the real power comes from convening people who would not normally be sitting at the same table.
Los Angeles has always been a region defined by creativity, ambition, and reinvention. What our region needs now is a commitment to collaboration that is equally ambitious. The challenges before us, from healthcare access and AI-driven workforce disruption to climate resilience and housing affordability, are simply too interconnected for siloed solutions.
Through the convening, it became clear the question business leaders should be asking isn’t just “Who owns this problem?” but “Who else needs to be in the room?”
When disciplines collide, innovation accelerates. When perspectives collide, ideas become more powerful. And when sectors collide, Los Angeles wins.
Dayle M. Smith, Ph.D., is dean of LMU’s 100-year-old College of Business Administration, which is powered by its mission to advance knowledge and develop business leaders with moral courage and creative confidence to be a force for good in the global community.