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Silicon Valley - Still Important To Tech Advances
mrspin writes "This week the The New York Times sparked a lively debate by publishing an article which argued that, when it comes to creating innovative technology, geography still matters — and that Silicon Valley is the place to be. It's certainly true that Silicon Valley, compared with other innovation hot-spots, has the much needed Venture Capital and the connections that enable money to flow from one new company to another. Want proof? ZDNet takes a look at LinkSViewer, a new web-based visual networking tool for exploring capital relationships in Silicon Valley." Is the success of Valley-area projects the result of a more creative environment, or is the cachet of the area (and the resulting money) the reason behind their success?
Silicon Valley is better for "brave, new world" revolutionary innovation, but not necessarily for "better, faster, cheaper" evolutionary innovation. Advances that require building on years of previous knowledge require more stability than the Silicon Valley environment can provide. Example: more successful microprocessor design is done in either Oregon, Haifa, Austin, New York (IBM), etc. than in Silicon Valley.
The new Silicon Valley (SV) is not in the USA. The new SV is located in Bangalore, India and Shanghai, China. Ebenezer Scrooge...errr... Microsoft can buy 5 Indian/Chinese engineers for the price of one American engineer.
Alabama is proof. We have one of the top research hospitals in the United States. We have a whole city full of freaking rocket scientists which incidentally has the nation's highest concentration of engineers. Jimmy Wales grew up here. We had three winners on American Idol (who no one cared about until then) and lots of good local bands (who no one cares about now.) Every generation, Alabama produces enough interesting people to completely replace the asshats who are responsible for Alabama's history - but then they all move, leaving the same old rednecks in charge.
Reputation is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It's the sole reason why Alabama is still socially conservative.
Step into a huge movement. Don't Tread In Me.
People like Steve Jobs, Larry, and Sergey have created an environment of pseudo-celebrity that feeds itself here in The Valley. Nerds (like myself) flock to the place in order to gain a social status that was unheard of pre-.com.
It's turned in to a cyclical thing now as the VC's came here to be bigwigs in something else besides entertainment and, of course, they want to be close to their money, so they make sure the companies they're pushing stay local.
Plus, Northern California is a pretty decent place to live in general. Most will complain about the housing prices but (most of) the salaries support that. Where else can people who were anti-social or even beat up in high school gain status and bathe in their sense of an overactive sense of self-entitlement just because they got an MBA? [sic]
Saving the World: One Drink at a Time
The positive feedback loop is a big part of it. It produces a pool of trained people from whom you can hire the skills you need on short notice and without paying relocation expenses and "moving away from where the action is" penalties.
But another factor is a small but very important piece of IP law in California:
If an employee makes an invention, on his own time, without using company materials or resources, and it's not in the company's immediate or likely future business path, it belongs to the employee. No matter what the employment contract says. (The contracts generally explicitly include one page which IS this provision.)
The result is that people who invented something that their company wouldn't be developing could rent the building across the street and build their own startup to develop and market it. And many of them did - and did it again a couple years later - repeat for decades.
The result is that startups budded off and grew like a yeast culture.
Any other state that wants to build its own version of Silicon Valley needs to clone this provision into their own state law.
If this is done, and they can provide an alternaive to California's high crime, high tax, and oppressive political-correctness, they might see an even bigger boom in one of their major university towns.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Technology is forcing people there by eliminating anything that doesn't require face to face communication. To be employed, you have to do things that require physical presence in the same place as your peers. Otherwise, you might as well be in Siberia.