Over the past two decades, the Conejo Valley has emerged from a collection of sleepy farm towns to a home for major companies.

Good schools and proximity to Los Angeles have a lot to do with the attractiveness of the area to companies such as Dole Food Co., Teledyne Technologies, Amgen and J.D. Power & Associates, said Bill Watkins, head of the Center for Economic Research and Forecasting at California Lutheran University in Thousand Oaks.

In the future, technology companies that want to be close to university research centers could find the area even more attractive, Watkins said. “The location between UCLA and UC Santa Barbara, is terrific,” he said.

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