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Which countries/locations have tried to make their own? How have they done? Why hasn't Silicon Valley been disrupted yet (or has it?)
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Yishan Wong, My entire professional life ha... (more) My entire professional life has consisted of "Engineering in Silicon Valley."953 upvotes by Vladimir Novakovski (one-time Harvard Ph.D. Economics student), Yair Livne (Econ PhD from Stanford GSB), Erik Madsen (Ph.D. candidate in Economic Analysis and Policy... (more) Ph.D. candidate in Economic Analysis and Policy, Stanford GSB), John Hegeman (Former PhD student in Economics, Stanford Unive... (more) Former PhD student in Economics, Stanford University), (more)Loading...
Because even the mythos of Silicon Valley's origins is incorrect, and this has led all the attempts to copy it to be similarly wrongheaded.
For example, every single answer on this page about Silicon Valley's origins is missing key details.
Most stories about the origins of the Valley (including Paul Graham's "How to Be Silicon Valley" - see http://www.paulgraham.com
In fact, Steve Blank's, series of pieces on The Secret History of Silicon Valley (see http://steveblank.com/200
Certainly, Stanford University was involved, but as the nexus of research led by Fred Terman, who directed a staff of over 800 people to build Allied military technology during WWII. Afterwards, as the dean of engineering at Stanford, he helped to create Stanford Industrial Park, where a large number of high-tech firms, many of them comprising the military-industrial complex (e.g. Varian Associates, General Electric, and Lockheed Martin) based their operations. In fact, according to http://steveblank.com/201
That's how the enormous concentration of technical minds came to be in the region: it wasn't just a school and some little startups and angel investors. Large-scale, sustained defense spending fed huge technical industries that hired enormous numbers of engineers from across the country, who moved their families into the region.
So the real answer to any country or state (ha) that wants to copy Silicon Valley is this: pour billions of dollars into a tightly-clustered region filled with military contractors and make it their mission to develop advanced military technology for a decade, which will prompt all the smart technical minds to move into the area, creating the necessary technical population to jumpstart an "innovation" region. Unfortunately, very few countries spend the requisite proportions of their budget on military research the way the United States did in the 1950s and 1960s, so this is basically impossible to replicate - except for perhaps China (kind of), which is the only country having some measure of success with creating a startup economy.
For example, every single answer on this page about Silicon Valley's origins is missing key details.
Most stories about the origins of the Valley (including Paul Graham's "How to Be Silicon Valley" - see http://www.paulgraham.com
In fact, Steve Blank's, series of pieces on The Secret History of Silicon Valley (see http://steveblank.com/200
Certainly, Stanford University was involved, but as the nexus of research led by Fred Terman, who directed a staff of over 800 people to build Allied military technology during WWII. Afterwards, as the dean of engineering at Stanford, he helped to create Stanford Industrial Park, where a large number of high-tech firms, many of them comprising the military-industrial complex (e.g. Varian Associates, General Electric, and Lockheed Martin) based their operations. In fact, according to http://steveblank.com/201
That's how the enormous concentration of technical minds came to be in the region: it wasn't just a school and some little startups and angel investors. Large-scale, sustained defense spending fed huge technical industries that hired enormous numbers of engineers from across the country, who moved their families into the region.
So the real answer to any country or state (ha) that wants to copy Silicon Valley is this: pour billions of dollars into a tightly-clustered region filled with military contractors and make it their mission to develop advanced military technology for a decade, which will prompt all the smart technical minds to move into the area, creating the necessary technical population to jumpstart an "innovation" region. Unfortunately, very few countries spend the requisite proportions of their budget on military research the way the United States did in the 1950s and 1960s, so this is basically impossible to replicate - except for perhaps China (kind of), which is the only country having some measure of success with creating a startup economy.
