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."

Comments

But actually living in London is a challenge

[Quakeulf]

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.

Re:Really?

[girlintraining]

If I were the UK, I would not want to model anything after California.

Anything modeled after California is known to cause cancer in the State of California. But only slightly more seriously, there's a subtle distinction between comparing what happened in California with what happened to California. The company with the largest market capitalization of any on earth is located there. Ten years ago, The Company Which Must Not Be Named was barely a blip on anyone's radar. There are many success stories to come out of Silicon Valley, and understandably, many business-minded folks would like to replicate that success.

Unfortunately, they're suffering from a massive case of survivor bias. It's true that silicon valley has birthed some of the largest, most successful tech firms out there. It's also true that the valley is littered with the corpses of failure. During the dot com bust, companies were erecting fences to keep creditors from repossessing the cars out of company lots. Silicon Valley's success story should be likened to another California success story: The California gold rush. You can't discuss success without also discussing the odds of failure.