8 February 2014
Last updated at 19:52 ET
California's Silicon Valley is much envied
The area - surrounding San Francisco Bay in northern
California - has arguably been the world's supreme entrepreneurial
hotspot, generating a seemingly endless supply of new technologies, new
companies, and huge wealth.
But now, other places around the world are trying to create start-up clusters of their own. Next week, the BBC will start a series looking at other areas trying to replicate Silicon Valley's success.
Ahead of this, we asked a range of experts from Silicon Valley why they thought the area had been so successful - and what advice they would give to those keen to emulate its achievements.
Vint Cerf, Google
It began with Fred Terman, Provost at Stanford, who recognised that federal investment in research led to the winning of WW2.
He leveraged this to expand the engineering department at Stanford by a factor of three and encouraged graduates, such as Hewlett and Packard, to start new companies.
The Valley is a small place. People know each other: they have worked with one another, or managed or worked for one another.
Forming a new business is pretty easy under Californian law.
It is altogether a remarkable,
vibrant and innovative culture that continues to produce dividends decade after decade.
Michael S Malone, technology journalist and author
One reason is time: the Valley is also the oldest high-tech
community on Earth. Begun in the Packard garage seventy-five years ago,
it has had more than seven decades to figure out every nuance and fill
every niche of the digital world.
The third reason is infrastructure: there are few places anywhere that offered a full range of educational institutions from trade schools, to mid-level colleges, to the two great universities, Stanford and Berkeley.
All of these factors combined to create a fourth reason for the success, and singularity, of Silicon Valley: culture.
The Valley didn't come freighted with old attitudes and cultures, but was free to create one of its own: risk-taking, multi-cultural, meritocratic and most of all, entrepreneurial.
Underlying everything is an acceptance - even an admiration - of good failure.
Paul Saffo, Discern Analytics
Next Silicon Valleys: How did California get it so right?
Ahem, let us not forget Silicon Valley in its beginnings was subsidized pretty much solely by NASA and benfited enormously from government grants and investment after that--LK
California's Silicon Valley is much envied
From
Hewlett-Packard to Google, from Apple to Intel - the many start-ups
created in Silicon Valley have helped define the modern world.
But now, other places around the world are trying to create start-up clusters of their own. Next week, the BBC will start a series looking at other areas trying to replicate Silicon Valley's success.
Ahead of this, we asked a range of experts from Silicon Valley why they thought the area had been so successful - and what advice they would give to those keen to emulate its achievements.
Vint Cerf, Google
Silicon Valley is a unique
amalgam of academia, private sector and US government research
investment coupled with a population of (serial) entrepreneurs.
He leveraged this to expand the engineering department at Stanford by a factor of three and encouraged graduates, such as Hewlett and Packard, to start new companies.
Continue reading the main story
Vint Cerf
- Chief internet evangelist at Google
- Widely known as a founding 'Father of the Internet,' he played a key role in leading its development
What results is a steady stream
of well-trained engineers, business people, marketers, researchers; a
vibrant venture capital community; a highly available stock market
appetite for stock flotations; and people with experience in business,
including how and why business failures happen.
Importantly, business or technical failure is considered experience and not an indelible mark of incompetence.The Valley is a small place. People know each other: they have worked with one another, or managed or worked for one another.
Forming a new business is pretty easy under Californian law.
It is altogether a remarkable,
vibrant and innovative culture that continues to produce dividends decade after decade.
Michael S Malone, technology journalist and author
Silicon Valley is not so easy to replicate.
Continue reading the main story
Michael S Malone
- Academic, journalist, broadcaster and author
- Has written many books about Silicon Valley, including Bill and Dave, the story of Hewlett Packard
A second reason is location:
Silicon Valley, as Santa Clara Valley, was a largely unpopulated
agricultural area at the end of WW2, with cheap land and a great city
nearby.
It benefited greatly from the migration of Americans,
especially veterans, west to California and into the new jobs in
aerospace and electronics.The third reason is infrastructure: there are few places anywhere that offered a full range of educational institutions from trade schools, to mid-level colleges, to the two great universities, Stanford and Berkeley.
All of these factors combined to create a fourth reason for the success, and singularity, of Silicon Valley: culture.
The Valley didn't come freighted with old attitudes and cultures, but was free to create one of its own: risk-taking, multi-cultural, meritocratic and most of all, entrepreneurial.
Underlying everything is an acceptance - even an admiration - of good failure.
Paul Saffo, Discern Analytics
The secret to Silicon Valley's
success? We know how to fail and we have been doing it for decades.
Failure is what fuels and renews this place. Failure is the foundation
for innovation.
Failure is essential because even the cleverest of
innovations - and businesses - fail a few times before they ultimately
succeed.Consider Google: at least half a dozen other companies tried to turn search into a business, but Google was the first to crack the code and turn search into a huge business.
And even when companies succeed, the only way to survive in the long term is to flee into the future by relentlessly innovating.
Apple all but killed off the iPod at its peak by turning the iPod's music function into a feature incorporated into the iPhone when it was introduced in 2007.
Continue reading the main story
Paul Saffo
- Technology forecaster and managing director of San Francisco-based Discern Analytics
- Has written for a wide range of publications including The Harvard Business Review, Fortune, Wired and Newsweek
Apple happily killed its own product because if Apple hadn't done so, another competitor would have done it for them.
But to succeed you need an ecology of fearless players from venture capitalists to banks, suppliers and myriad other supporting businesses unafraid to risk all by helping with often flakey and unpredictable start-ups.
So if you want to be the next Silicon Valley, don't copy our success. Learn to support and encourage novel and ultimately successful failure.
Vivek Wadhwa, entrepreneur, academic and author
Regions all over the world have tried to copy Silicon Valley, but none has succeeded.
That's because they have focused on trying to recreate its venture capital system, universities, or start-up incubators.
Continue reading the main story
Vivek Wadhwa
- Academic, researcher, writer and entrepreneur
- He has written for publications such as the Washington Post, the Wall St Journal, and Business Week
What they don't realise is that
what really makes the Valley tick is its culture of risk-taking and
information sharing; people-to-people networks; openness to new ideas;
and diversity - more than half of its innovators are foreign-born.
These are the ingredients that can't easily be recreated.
Venture capital only follows innovation, it goes where the opportunities for building wealth are, it doesn't create new opportunities.
So this shouldn't be the starting point in attempts to build an innovation ecosystem.
Any region wanting to build its version of Silicon Valley should focus on its people and culture.
Judy Estrin, serial entrepreneur
Silicon Valley is a unique
combination of universities, companies, venture investors, culture,
weather, all sorts of things that come to play to create Silicon Valley.
Continue reading the main story
Judy Estrin
- Former chief technology officer of tech giant Cisco
- A serial entrepreneur who's been involved with the founding of eight companies so far
You need to have at least one or
two big companies because often entrepreneurs are people who work in a
big company and come up with an idea.
So you need big companies to provide both talent and ideas and infrastructure and then you need the right policies and incentives.
It's about making sure that you don't have policies that are making it too hard to start a business.
So it's a combination of things that you can try to reproduce Silicon Valley.
Will you get exactly Silicon Valley?
No. But you might get the equivalent of that entrepreneurial ecosystem, but for a different area - maybe for healthcare, maybe for the food industry, maybe for farming.
The Next Silicon Valleys is an eight-part series broadcast on BBC World News on Mondays at 06:55, 08:55, 13:50, 15:50 and 19:50 (all times GMT).
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