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Can the UK Create Something To Rival Silicon Valley?
An anonymous reader writes "Hoping to bring together ambition, creativity and energy in one place, the UK government hopes to grow East London so that we can benefit from the same sort of success that has been seen in California; jobs, tax revenue, highly skilled workers and takeovers. If it works, the country would massively benefit, with something to rival other established industries."
I meant Nawww!
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california has them, other states not so much
get your government to pass HUGE tax credits and other corporate welfare and watch it happen
Can England gather together a bunch of self righteous, self absorbed a**holes that will hop from one company to another hoping to strike it obscenely rich?
I guess would you really want too?
A good start would be not offering to arrest and deport people who broke no law in your country.
The UK doesn't have any PC manufactures.. ..Because they have not yet found a way to make PCs leak oil.
Look at what happened with the Raspberry Pi, import taxes pretty much sunk any possibility of building it in the UK.
I am one of those people who came to the UK to jump form a successful startup (Playfish) to another successful startup (Plumbee), but my main problem is finding a place to stay that works out. I want a place that is: - Close to the office - Got decent standards - Is affordable - I can have for a long term In London I can only choose two from that list. Then there are extremely greedy landlords and sleazy estate agents that will only want to fool you of your money in a not so well regulated business. This is practically making it impossible for me to be able to save up money and continue to do my job here, and is the main reason for me wanting to move away from London as soon as possible and leave this wreck of a housing market behind.
What we actually need is a new "wild west". A place where there are no artificial restrictions like patents, lawyers and what not so that innovation can flourish.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Not being from the UK, I'm given to understand that the regulations on employment and tax structure is much less favorable to starting up a business there than it is in the United States. (Whether that, especially the former, is a good thing is an open question.) Even with the support and incentives mentioned in the blog posting, it's hard to see how they would create a SV like environment without that. Would anyone from the UK care to chime in?
How much innovation hindering intellectual property (eg Eye Pee) does the UK have?
Software patents? Business method patents? Patents on rectangles with round corners?
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
the UK government hopes to grow East London so that we can benefit from the same sort of success that has been seen in California;
- DOA, just like Russian version of Silicon Valley (Skolkovo).
That is unless the government in UK is planning to get rid of regulations, taxes, labour laws and inflation of-course.
MY OTHER COMMENTS
Why not try to do it in Cambridge? It's already a major technology cluster, better invest there than to try to recreate something from scratch...
No
Fine. How about Silicon Squire? You limeys have a lot to learn from America if you want to be the next 'Silicon Valley'.
The first sentence of that article is "With the Olympics about to get underway"...
Why is such an old article coming up?
What is the author smoking. California currently has $380 billion in devt and a 10.8% unemployment rate. I would call that far from being successful.
If I were the UK, I would not want to model anything after California
sudo make me a sandwich
The vast majority of SV ventures have been expensive failures. It's essentially a welfare economy subsidized by venture capitalists who prey on the ignorance of non-technical investors. The rare ventures that succeed tend to move out of SV. The vast majority of SV workers never get rich; they move elsewhere when they are past age 30 and are no longer welcome. SV puts out its hype about the virtues of "hard work", "two men in a garage", and "no government" -- though in reality, it's about knowing the right people, being in the right place at the right time, and making most of their money from government contracts. Most scientific advances happen outside of SV, and most successful high-tech businesses are based outside of SV. I would say that SV is just a mysique created by the banking industry.
The future of high-tech leans toward medicine. SV is not strong in medicine; they just have bubbly biotech start-ups that typically disappear within a year. The successful high-tech business of the future will depend more on interactions with non-IT people, but SV's homogeneous population places it at a disadvantage there. SV does not have large numbers of health care professionals, industrial technicians, or other types who would provide valuable input.
They did this a long time ago.
What? Fictional places don't count? Are you suggesting Silicon Valley isn't fictional???
Government? Really? Mmmmm. No.
So they can't pull the 80 hour work weeks or useing temps as full time long term in place of employees.
Different places have different specialties.. And when a place attracts lots of people who know something, it becomes a pole for that thing, generates high salaries in that field, and make life very expensive for everyone else. Silicon Valley, Bangalore, etc do high tech. New York, London, Hong Kong do banking. You can't have all of them. And I doubt a small-ish country like the UK can have many of them. The US can afford to have New York and Silicon Valley because they're very very far appart. The City is just too close to East London (or even Cambridge) to make them separate markets, meaning that old humid houses are still terribly expensive and no one in their right minds would want to move there unless they are made tons and tons of money.
It's a pointless question. Let me explain:
Theoretically, the UK could try to accomplish this. The main barrier preventing any type of industry from flourishing in the UK is the obscenely high effective tax rate on human activity. (please give this typical figures, maybe in percentage if you're more familiar Brits)
The UK could then make an attempt to relieve a certain location and industry of these high taxation burdens to have the locus flourish.
The problem is that while this is a good move and should be applauded, simply cutting taxation on human activity without cutting the corresponding government spending doesn't solve much. The spending has to be paid for somehow, whether that is immediately by confiscating funds from other people and locations or somewhat delayed by building deficits and inflating the fiat money supply and thereby causing the mis-allocation of resources and bigger busts and recessions or depressions, people will continue to pay the piper.
The only sure way to encourage industry to flourish is to cut regulation and cut government taxation and spending. Remember, most government taxation is appropriating funds from a more effective use determined by the market, and instead putting them to less effective use as determined by bureaucrats.
Liberty.
... do they really want that?
People with options like living in nice places.
The weather in the UK is awful more often than not.
This alone would be enough to keep most people away.
And the nanny state tendencies of the wonderfully fascist UK
government ought to take care of most of the rest.
The UK is a shithole. They are now losers riding on their former reputation,
fast becoming a model for how to create a police state in the English speaking world.
But the sun has most definitely set, permanently, on the British Empire.
The boat sailed on a Silicon Valley workalike about 25 years ago. What with all the tech patents, software patents, business model patents, and patent trolls sewing up innovation unless you're already IBM, Microsoft, or Apple, you won't be able to innovate and defend anything What are they thinking, incubate and develop the next Facebook? The next PayPal? TechLawyers.com?
Understanding the scope of the problem is the first step on the path to true panic.
A toothless grin makes your Brits seems awfully LOW-TECH so first things first !!
Only in America is the market free enough to sustain innovation at the level of an Apple or a Microsoft. Socialistic countries like the UK simply cannot work efficiently to produce anything of any real value. The UK lost its car industry, the UK lost the computer industry, the UK lost EVERYTHING to socialism. That is yet another reason to vote for Mitt Romney, because we do not want to become a shit hole the way socialist europe has.
Romney/Ryan 2012. Take back America.
Ambition, creativity and energy are great, but without copious amounts of financing it's all pretty worthless.
A lot of things have to come together to create a 'Silicon Valley'. 1. You need a university center of excellence (like Stanford University) that actively promotes the high technology business. They have (or at least had) leases on land in the Santa Clara Valley, and offered good rates to fledgeling technology companies. 2. You have to have an entrepreneurial spirit: this isn't some 'I just graduated from business school, now I want my million dollars' boob, you need someone who has an idea or a set of ideas, are willing to put in time and effort developing those ideas, and create things that people want. Some of that spirit comes from being highly creative, almost artsy, and that's a trillion light years from any business school 'follow the leader' types. 3. You need financial backing from people who can see things in the long term. All countries have banks, but most have banks that turn tail and run at the first sign of trouble. They don't want to backstop people for the long term. They are good at providing money when the company doesn't need very much (when the sun is shining they offer umbrellas), but then it turns cloudy or starts to rain, they want their money (umbrella) back. Many other countries have centres of excellence with an entrepreneurial spirit, but a crappy banking/financial system where there is no long term outlook. Companies in these countries fail, because the financial backing is lacking.
Both India and Russia tried the same and we see how that turned out...
CAPTCHA = geisha (Yes!)
You need to find someone to pick the right start-ups. Those people are rare, and unlikely to work for a city.
You need a pro-privacy, pro-free speach atmosphere, something that UK seriously lacks. (Cameras, libel laws, etc)
You need a good source of well educated people interested in science, not business.
You need a good place to live. Something that will attract smart people to live there besides the money. The UK is not sunny California.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
more like sillycun
so that we can benefit from the same sort of success that has been seen in California
Yes, and for free, if you order now, you will also receive:
*Crushingly high real estate prices
*Monstrously overcrowded prisons
*Bankrupt schools
BUT WAIT! THERES MORE! Be one of the first 100 callers and receive, as our special gift to you:
*Shortages of electricity and water!
*Political leadership totally devoid of morality, consistency, or backbone!
But seriously, California is a "hotbed" for ONE single reason: The weather is nice pretty much all year long. Anyone who lives there and tries to sell you on something else is lying to themselves. People go for the nice weather, and they put up with the constant bullshit because hey, it like never snows, unless you live in the mountains, which are only like 2 hours' drive away from the beaches... So why not live there? Right? And once you get enough smart people in one place (they are bound to turn up when you have 30 million people to start with) things just sort of take shape.
So, UK, you want your own Silicon Valley? Get a warm-weather generator, a couple of nice schools, a semi-pristine coastline, then fill it over the top with people, and wait 50 years. You will probably get something like that, or hey maybe you will end up with something like Haiti. Could go either way.
Until then the question is moot.
Get rid of any major startup fees for corporations, reduce taxes significantly, and provide the world's fastest, unmetered, uncensored network in the world. I think that alone would be enough to convince everyone in silicon valley, or rather it would if only England wasn't full of self-righteous ---holes.
cheaper living costs, good infrastructure, less commute time, and better beer
Clueless politicians sometimes have these ideas which, on the surface at lease, seem like a good idea.
Unfortunately, they have no earthly idea how to implement these ideas; and indeed, the very political nature of their jobs and way of thinking precludes them from doing so.
To draw an analogy, it's like trying to grow a forest by transplanting seedlings, without considering issues like soil quality, moisture, or environment.
Businesses are started by innovation, and grow in an environment of infrastructure.
What is the infrastructure in London like? Is there easy and direct access to roads, or is there draconian limits on driving in the city. Is there universal access to high-speed internet, or are there restrictions on what you can do with your net connection?
How easy is it to register a new business? Are there tax breaks for established businesses which newly-started businesses don't get? Do existing businesses get political favors that the local pizza-shop doesn't have access to?
Does the society have a general feeling of tolerance for radical ideas? Do they allow people to air radical ideas in the political forum? Do the laws enforce restrictions on publishing truthful facts (such as libel/slander)?
Does the society allow free exchange of ideas and reworking and improvement of the ideas of others (as the fashion industry does), or do they promote draconian restrictions? (Note the size of the fashion industry which has no protections, versus the size of the music/movie industry which is very strict.)
Does London allow people to go about freely and conduct affairs which do not harm others, or are people always monitored, afraid, "looking over their shoulders"?
Is high-level crime punished at the same level as low-level? IOW, can rich business owners get away with serious crimes with impunity? (Wasn't some rich business owner accused of tampering with a police investigation awhile back? Did anyone go to jail for that?)
This sounds ever-so-much like a fuzzy "feel good" idea that sounds nice on paper, which will be used as an excuse to funnel tax money from the people to existing businesses. "If you set up here for a tax break, we'll get more in tax revenue from the workers than the tax break costs".
As a contrast, look at Hong Kong pre-2000 (before it became part of China), and India pre-2000. Hong Kong had no resources and no people, but was a major world power. India had lots of people and lots of resources but was a 3rd world nation. To start a business in Hong Kong you pay a small fee and register... you're done. In America, it's a little more but largely painless.
In India, it took Kentucky Fried Chicken 7 years to get "permission" to start selling food in India.
Environment matters. Innovation and infrastructure is what counts.
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A unique set of circumstances led to the creation of Silicon Valley. You could take this as far back as Manifest Destiny and the Gold Rush. That's stretching it a bit though. You can more directly tie it to the natural accumulation of defense plants near a major port. After WW2, the defense industry was ther working on electronics. The modern era arguably begins with the Traiterous Eight. Once the culture was established, people went there because... it was there. It's self sustaining.
That doesn't mean things can't change. It just means that it's not easy. Also, there isn't room for too many of these things. Sadly, we could lose it. That would be one more sign of the decline of American's empire. The previous empire taking the crown is not expected.
Now let's add on the fact that the world in general may have reached some kind of technological peak (peak oil, no more cheap energy) and the world focus isn't on Si Valley type stuff anyway.
Trying to recreate Si Valley is like trying recreate Woodstock. You just get a cheap knock-off, not a real happening.
Don't get me wrong. It's fine to have tech centers and music festivals. More power to 'em; but you can't create TechStock intentionally.
If you want a "silicon valley" in the UK, don't target East London. Extend what you have and go for Reading [pronounce "REDDING"], which as it happens is already nicknamed "The silicon valley of the UK". Comfortably, Reading is already the home of many small unknown companies such as Oracle, Nvidia, Microsoft and Symantec.
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The problem with trying to create something like this, is I'm not sure that Silicon Valley was 'created' per se.
It seems like it happened because you had a couple of companies (HP for example) who set up shop there, and then other stuff grew around it. I'm not sure you could just go out and say "OK, we'll put a center of innovation and technology here".
It sort of has to grow organically I should think.
I used to work with someone who grew up in what is now Silicon Valley. He said at the time, it was a very not fancy suburb of San Francisco, but that over the years it changed into what it is now, with the crazy real estate prices and everything else to go with it.
It just seems like more of a historical accident than something you can plan for. Sure, you can try to entice people to go there, and possibly even give some perks for doing it. But that doesn't seem like it is going to give you all that much chance of success.
Cities occasionally decide they want to become hubs of this kind of stuff, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to achieve this.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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When I think of the UK, I think of the rightful heirs of the Roman Empire. They can not only build a worldwide bureaucracy but staff it enthusiastically, and have administrators who improve on it month after month by coming up with more and better regulations.
The Brits invented golf. They didn't invent common law, but it sure seems that they did.
Silicon Valley has a very different mindset though. It's disruptive in nature.
It's a recurrent theme in British politics. Look up Harold Wilson's 1963 "White Heat of Technology" speech and the creation of the Ministry of Technology.
Britain within living memory has been a technology leader in aviation, nuclear, computing, Those were largely developments that came out of the war and declined in the face of a dependence on government money for investment (and in the latter case, an unwillingness to admit even to the existence of the technology).
Private investors aren't interested in long-term investments - the "investment banking" industry has become big largely because it's eschewed actual growth-producing investment for complex financial instruments which are essentially a form of privatised taxation.
There is still a lot of high-tech industry (take Rolls Royce aero engines for example), but it survives and grows pretty much in spite of the business environment. It's no accident that Britain's now successful, productive and growing car industry is owned and financed from Japan, Germany and India.
It may be possible to grow IT-based industries in London, but they won't be owned in London and nor will any IP associated with them. And I'm afraid the government is sufficiently clueless about technology that it might actually feel it needs to encourage businesses like those cited by the article ( Instagram, Skype and Groupon) whereas there is probably a lot to be said for actively discouraging them.
Plus, this seems to be all about exempting businesses from paying their normal dues. I'm all in favour of foreigners spending money in London. I'm not in favour of the government giving it back with interest to encourage them.
As someone who works at Silicon Roundabout (and long before this latest nonsense), it seems that the modus operandum is:
So long as the entrepreneurs have their IStuff and their deckshoes and are riding tokyobikes then the government will give them as much money as they like.
And there is no need to create a long-lasting company, nor generate any profit nor employ anyone who isn't one of your chums!
And you business plan must include "cloud", "ipad" and/or "social".
What a waste of time and money.
Warm beer no less
how about silicon peat bog? Or just silicon bog?
Your summary of the article is stupid. None of those sentences are quotes. In fact the article states at the end that SVs great weakness is that it's a crap place to live, directly contradicting what you wrote. Here's an actual quote:
Yes, yes it is. Having lived temporarily in the Valley and grown up in the UK, I'm pretty sure I don't want to live along the US-101. I'd do it if there was some really compelling reason, but otherwise no thanks - love the sun, hate the driving. Rents and property prices in London are absurd and most likely still a bubble, but other than that it's not a bad place to live at all.
Your other points (not quotes) are also pretty stupid. There are a ton of well educated people in London, as well as many Brits working for Silicon Valley based companies. The UK has a long history of computer science, you know about Bletchley Park, right? The BBC Micro? The government doesn't deserve any credit for it (the BBC does!) but there were a ton of people growing up in the 80s and 90s who had access to really good computers and lots of educational material about them. It certainly got me started. At 28 I'm now a senior engineer at Google (in Switzerland).
BTW I think it's really great that companies like Amazon, Facebook and the big G have set up shop in London. These companies are great at training people who can then develop the confidence and skills to go do their own companies (Facebook was practically made of ex-Googlers back in the day, don't know if it still is). Especially anything internet related that might scale up fast will benefit a lot from the pool of skilled workers these companies will attract and create.
Where I live near a small city (under half a million) housing prices vary greatly in the same area. Currently I live 20 minutes from anywhere in the metro area. I live in a 1600sq ft. house in a once small town that still looks like one and it costs less than 1000 USD a month. There are quaint, simple apartments for students within walking distance of work for 400 USD, and above those are very swanky residences that cost 2-5 USD per square foot.
Really you can have it all, even including personal preference, if you chose to live in a small city making 25% less. You wont notice the cut as the cost of living is reduced by similar or more. It is well worth it.
At the beginning of Terry Gilliam's Brazil, there is a short film entitled, The Crimson Permanent Assurance. I suspect this became the American 80's children's model for aspiring bankers, mortgage brokers and derivatives peddlers.
Re: the question of London gathering up more a**holes aspiring to wealth and power, had they planned a bit further ahead, they might have outbid Tampa, FL and hosted the RNC.
Some of those numbers are probably a bit approximated.
The UK has more taxes than citizens it seems. There are literally too many mouths to feed for the greedy government folk to give the tax breaks that it'll take for them to draw business into their country.
We already have a silicon valley... Why don't they create something new?
Oh wait... That is because they don't need a silicon valley for anything; they just need a thriving economy.
Well guess what, morons? The economy is about to implode, not only because of a huge fraud, but also because lending equals income. Yes. No realy... Do the math, correctly this time...
Now if the UK is in deep shit, first look at what is wrong with the UK. Here are the results:
1. Shitty people, who elect;
2. Shitty politicians, who pass;
3. Shitty laws, especially;
4. Shitty technology infrastructure, due to;
5. Shitty DRM and TCP, copied straight out of;
6. 1984.
Dear UK,
Since you will never get out of this shithole, because you are not reading this post and not taking it seriously, you will never get up and create what the world wants to buy, which is:
1. Open hardware;
2. FLOS software;
3. Privacy infrastructure;
4. Quality goods, at an;
5. Affordable price.
God save the UK.
Here be signatures
The world is full of urban centres that are trying to emulate the success of Silicon Valley. Ever heard of Silicon Valley North? No, I don't mean San Francisco. It's a term my home town, Ottawa, Canada, has adopted for itself. It's also been applied to Toronto, Vancouver, Waterloo, Calgary, and Montreal. But the truth is that none of them have a decent claim on the title -- they can't touch the real Silicon Valley in terms of scale, depth of expertise or level of innovation.
There's a big barrier to anyone trying to be the new Silicon Valley and it has nothing to do with corporate tax rates or research incentives. Those are all easy to measure and copy. It's the network effect -- the same one that makes eBay, the QWERTY keyboard and Microsoft Office so hard to displace. The smart people want to go to Silicon Valley because that's where the smart people are. After all, being with other smart people is not only more interesting, but more likely to lead to your own success. It's easy to see in a place like Ottawa, where the cream of the tech community are frequent targets for Silicon Valley head-hunters. They go, not (just) for the money, but to be part of that scene.
So good luck East London, but maybe you should have a plan B, just in case.
AFAIK non-compete contracts are not legal in the UK.
They're really only a few bankrupt cities and health programs away already!
It's an incredibly buoyant place, brimming with start-ups clamouring for young, naieve would-be developers to poach.
There are are some pretty big, established firms there too, like ARM.
Why are the politicians obsessed with having everything in London? It's already over-priced and over-crowded. The rest of the UK needs the investment, not Greater London.
Poor engineers can not afford to live and work there (they've been priced out of the market by the bankers and "executive" tyes), nor should they.
Stick Men
We have the most vibrant car design and development in the UK - probably in the world. I don't think many would argue? Small volume sport single approval car production, F1, supplier to the US Indie Car business. Morgan (who a Honda CEO said would be one of the last few manufacturers standing in the world - read it somewhere in a Sunday colour supplement magazine).
So what can we learn from that?
I think the least government interference the better. The current round of Pirate Bay banning shows that we are being run by clueless Luddites. I wrote to my MP who copied me the stuff on the judgement in favour of Amstrad when tape to tape was:
a) OK to sell blank tapes
b) OK to manufacture tape to tape devices
c) OK to retail tape to tape devices
I find the ruling on The Pirate Bay laughable. It's like saying we should ban chemistry lessons because.....
Hold on we should ban google and search engines because people can find the Anarchist's Cook Book.
Government involvement - it's the last think the tech industry needs, I wouldn't trust a senior politician to sit on a toilet seat the right way round. I'm sure they start of OK, then just bent with all the money involved.
But then to be fair we had some sanity in the UK on an Apple ruling:
"The decision from Judge Colin Birss means Apple will have to post the notice on its U.K. website for six months, as well as "several newspapers and magazines to correct the damaging impression" that Samsung copied the iPad, according to Bloomberg. The same judge said in a ruling earlier this month that the Samsung Galaxy Tab is not "cool" enough to be mistaken for an iPad." http://www.appleinsider.com/articles/12/07/18/uk_judge_rules_apple_must_advertise_samsung_did_not_copy_the_ipad.html
Only in America could the iPad/iPhone not be accepted as a prior art. It should have never had gone to a jury. I think it will result in Apple being broken up under the Sherman AntiTrust Act 1929.
Government / Technology - what a laugh unless you count the UK's Trident programme and it's replacement - then it's solid employment for the middle class on the surfdom of everyone else.
That's "Siliconionium" to you, pal
It's called Bangers and Mash Grove.
Yea, that's exactly what we need, let's just finish the corporate buyout of our government and go from a corporate controlled government to a pure corporate government...
"... the UK lost EVERYTHING to socialism. That is yet another reason to vote for Mitt Romney, because we do not want to become a shit hole the way socialist europe has."
You poor deluded idiot.
Let's see you explain how Obama's bailout of the US auto industry helped the US sink into becoming a socialist shithole.
Oh, but that doesn't fit with your simplistic redneck worldview does it ? Idiots like you pick and choose facts and ignore others
in order to maintain a certain set of beliefs. But the problem for you is that reality will ALWAYS burst your little pinhead bubble.
I wish I could mod this "-1, Funny".
Right from TFA:
The Valley's success hasn't grown overnight. Infrastructure which is key to this has evolved over the years, with the area now full of lawyers, education, venture capitalists and also a big community of entrepreneurs for which to gain advice and support.
Even California couldn't pull off a repeat performance anymore, Ronald Reagan dismantled the free educational infrastructure which attracted people who became the builders of silicon valley. That luxury came out of a set of ethics dependent on an understanding that Californians were building a better quality of life for one another, not just a better hub for business activities. (Reagan trickled down on that quite effectively.)
And notwithstanding the successes of the venture capitalists, the world banking system has proven its corruption to be the equivalent its progressive impetus as globalization has stalled in the light of hiccups in the Euro Zone and the BRIC. In the end, wealth is a collective measure that is thwarted by disparity and greed.
The fiction that a government ever does anything but provide the infrastructure and security for its people to survive is dangerous. No local government will ever be directly responsible for creating the perfect storm of synergistic cooperation and innovative circumstances that drove Silicon Valley's success except by accident.
And as long as international relations remains hamstrung by nationalistic tendencies and encourages the kind of egregious disparities of wealth that depend upon ignoring the overall direction of humanity, toward ever-increasing population and environmental degradation. It won't matter much in the long run if we ever see this scenario again.
Sorry London, you're not alone.
> You need a good source of well educated people interested in science, not business.
The latter part of that sentence is redundant. The majority of people here in the UK have no interest in education, just reality TV, junk food, teenage pregnancy and council flats.
Let's see .. lower than average pay, bad weather 90% of the year, high prices on everything, off the chart taxes, total surveillance, county officials spying on your and even going through your trashcans ...
I suppose what they could do is ..
1. relocate the island to someplace tropical
2. stop the police state
3. lower their preposterously high taxes on everything
4. stop going through people's trashcans.
Germany incidentally tried a green card program a few years back to attract foreign IT personnel and failed miserably because they're offering the same
bad deal:
Germany has, let's see: lower than average pay, bad weather 90% of the year, high prices on everything, off the chart taxes, total surveillance, county officials spying on your and even going through your trashcans ...see how that worked out for them?
Make it easy and economical to let smart people try to do stuff, and don't punish success.
If enough people try stuff, some of them will be successful, and you'll have a "silicon valley".
Countries from America to India have their fair share of excellent software engineers. Britain has a fair few excellent computer scientists.
But England has fuck all in the way of good software engineers.
We do pissant, easily outsourceable work - which is routinely outsourced.
British software engineers tend to be very uninterested in their discipline, i.e. engineering. They're either geeks who enjoy hacking or low level business types who just want a good job. And the ones who did well at university (who hasn't?) tend to be cunts about it, thinking this entitles them to respect even when they've not coded for shit in the real world.
And I say this as an British ex-software engineer who found that British engineers - but not foreigners coming to work in Britain - were often quite disappointing to work with. I don't often tip my hat to the American way, but US software engineering ethos is far nicer.
"We have before us the opportunity to forge for ourselves and for future generations a new world order -- a world where the rule of law, not the law of the jungle, governs the conduct of nations. When we are successful -- and we will be -- we have a real chance at this new world order, an order in which a credible United Nations can use its peacekeeping role to fulfill the promise and vision of the U.N.'s founders." George Herbert Bush.
This is a country that can't even upgrade it's communications infastructure.
So the answer here is an emphatic no.
Then the answer is "no."
Repeat the hollywood success story : make a zone where innovation is not hindered by patents.
The Wise adapts himself to the world. The Fool adapts the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the Fool.
In India
Who said white? Toothless, my dear, toothless. Besides, don't blame (everyone else), blame (TV, movies, radio, and water coolers).
You're gonna need 3 things to be like Silicon Valley:
1.) Lots of Indians
2.) Lots of Beer
3.) Lots of children growing up in their parents footsteps (the future generation of high-tech employees)
I figure you've got #1 and #2 already taken care of, #3 just requires time (and lots of #2).
I'm with El Reg on this one...
Silicon Roundabout
Speaking in as computer scientist from London, and having worked at several unsuccessful start ups, watched others in similar start ups based in the UK and who have friends in the EU who are at successful start-ups, the one anecdotal piece of advise I have is this - Don't let public school 'boys' anywhere near your c-suite. They can't fathom how to work in a cooperative manner, and only see relationships in terms of being beneath or above. They tend to hire old school 'chums' instead of talent and lack creative ability. The only good thing they are good at is bring in investment, which is a bloody shame.
Even if you ignore the regulations and health and safety laws. People just don't have the same attitude. I think that scares away people who can go anywhere in the world with their skills and it's just hard to find the right people.
Plus everything revolves around London. London is expensive, dirty and not always a joy to be in. Compare that to working in California (before factoring anything else) and which would you rather work in?
i think i prefer Siliconne Valle
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
Soul Crushing suburban sprawl I hate but people with families tend to like it. When you go to settle down you're probably going to want this soul crushing sprawl. I'm guessing a vast majority of the people who work for these tech compaines are not young.
#! /sausage/mershedperterters
echo silicon valley
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
I live in the UK and have worked all over including London and it isn't a place I would like to locate to. It is also quite crowded already.
I reckon trying to reinvigorate parts of Wales would be a great idea it would bring money into a part of the country that could use some as well as being a nice place to live lots of health country living.
Hate to break it to you, but the valley is pretty much just sales offices for Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean companies now.
Why would the UK want to re-create that??
Maurice W. Hilarius Voice: (778) 347-9907
So like, when will someone mention ARM, you know, the British company that is like one of the biggest chip designers in the world and stuff.
Did I like mention they're a UK company?
Its like they're Silicon, but not, since they don't make the chips themselves which is probably for the best.
But like they're huge and stuff (also modest).
The car industry? Thats doomed mate, welcome to the long game :)
geisha is japanese... you know, that place that makes a robot that makes a cup of tea when it wants tea :)
I don't see why you think the people are unlikely to want to work in a city. There are already start-ups in London, and similar companies (Google, Mozilla, Yahoo!).
The UK is pro-privacy, compared to the US, and similar to the EU. The libel laws are odd; if you're that worried about the cameras you've read Slashdot too much.
London has 8 million people, they're not all bankers. But note that there are a *lot* of start-ups working for the financial industry -- I've been to conferences in London and been surprised how many people had made something cool and sold the service to a bank. You need business people anyway (investors, people who can make the company work).
London doesn't attract people with its weather (although it rains less here than you probably think, check a rainfall map). London attracts people with culture, something California lacks.
http://siliconmilkroundabout.com/companies
Sadly, it will never work - for much the same reason that most all of Europe is in a recession there seems to be no end to. Europeans dont like to work or put in the long hours that it takes to make startups happen. Even worse, the governments have laws that prevent people from working late in most European countries! Added to which, most people want contracts and if you dont give them a contract you can get fined or go to jail... and most contracts put the companys owners on the line for back pay and 'built in pensions' and so on, so if your startup doesnt work then you cant file bankruptcy etc you end up having to pay every one off. Its the worst possible place to try and make a startup happen... the old school economics of Europe as a whole only support large companys.
What you see nowadays,
A savage from a British colony teaching Latin to a barbarian of our Britannia province.... (sigh)
"The UK government hopes to grow East London so that we can benefit from the same sort of success that has been seen in California; jobs, tax revenue, highly skilled workers and takeovers."
That sounds like an exact copy of Dublin. First you have to get the big foreign companies in as Dublin did and then home-grown ones start to sprout as is happening. Also, London is not a site of vast deposits of silicon that I'm aware of, as Silicon valley is - maybe a bit of coal but not silicon.
The UK? Create an equivalent to Silicon Valley?
That's funny. Really funny (I live there).
The British Government appear to be working towards turning as much of the country as possible into a fascimile of Detroit. But Silicon Valley? The British Establishment hasn't come to terms with the digital watch yet.
... there are already plenty of "Silicon-something" on the map in many countries, but then, there is only one Silicon Valley
... I'll give you guys a link, to what I said before, about Silicon Valley and the many copycats
I do not like to repeat myself, so
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=3017561&cid=40837297
Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
Number of cameras in London isn't any different from any other city. The report that everyone quotes used ridiculous extrapolation assuming that a major high street was typical.
And most of those were privately owned. Do you live in a country where shops and banks don't use security cameras?
Libel laws are being rewritten.
We do have a good source of Science educated people. It's called Sweden. Seriously, although science education in the UK isn't all it could be, the main problem is that not enough people are going into science. The UK is a big place though, so a realtvely small percentage still means a lot of trained scientists and engineers, and there's all of Europe to pick from.
And for some reason London is a popular place to live. I'm not a huge fan but it clearly has something.
It's a state of mind.
As part of the Bay Area, it includes the universities Stanford and Berkeley- polar opposites yet both a hotbed of creative entrepreneurial talent. It includes San Francisco, another hotbed of creative (artistic) talent. Even the general population is innovative, eccentric and usually fun to be around. All this has been building up to a crescendo since the days of Mark Twain.
Boston is competitive, again because of the talent drawn to its fine universities and money poured in by alumni. Seattle has Microsoft, Costco, Boeing, Starbucks and a few other businesses and a good university which makes it reasonably competitive.
I'm not familiar with East London- how does it compare in talent & resources?
...omphaloskepsis often...
Good luck with that
To be blunt, the Silicon roundabout area has exploded in the last 5 years without government 'help'. RedMonk now estimate over 3000 tech related start-ups in the area (and the area is geographically small). Government wants to help? They should pretty much stay out of the way, excepting helping create more space for this environment to flourish in. The local council recently rejected a bid to renovate a derelict building into a tech start-up campus and community space with major ties to the local community (high school kids from the more deprived side of the area). It would've been nice if the government had supported that sort of initiative.
Most of the Hoxton "silicon roundabout" types are just wankers who've done a media studies and web design course at college.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Foreign culture via the TV. Oh yes, we know that only too well.
This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
creativity is nice http://www.maltepe.edu.tr/ozel-yetenek-sinavlari
to come up with the question, what makes you think you will ever see the answer? additional tip: don't get in any more ww's.
Definitely Yes.
Here is a Montreal Quebec Canada Story. The city had an old broken down waterfront area that used to house manufacturing. Together with some developers, with the government (provincial and federal), the took three city blocks square, and deemed it the IT square. They installed high speed fibre lines in the older buildings, temporarily, provided cheap rents, and so forth.
Over time, they demolished and rebuilt new high tech buildings in that kilometer squared area. Some companies took entire floors, some an office, and some a bit more than a cubicle (shared office).
Over time, all the buildings were replaced as new. Interestingly enough, neighboring buildings were demolished, and condominium apartments were built in their place. Many heritage buildings were kept, but converted to condos.
The IT center outgrew that area, but spread to adjoining areas or took buildings not too far away. (Erricson, Ubisoft, etc. etc.) Good development premises resulted in attracting talent to Montreal. BTW, headhunters also got a small office in the Square Kilometer.
Leslie Satenstein Montreal Quebec Canada
from bankers
All cows eat grass!