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A comment on Silicon Valley: Abandoned. Parent comment

Re:Silicon Valley: Abandoned by skmurphy on Wednesday October 28, 2009 @02:30PM (#908443)
Silicon Valley is more than 100 years old. I blogged about this in http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/11/05/steve-blank-on-secre... but here is one quick data point:

California Landmark NO. 836 PIONEER ELECTRONICS RESEARCH LABORATORY - This is the original site of the laboratory and factory of Federal Telegraph Company, founded in 1909 by Cyril F. Elwell. Here, Dr. Lee de Forest, inventor of the three-element radio vacuum tube, devised the first vacuum tube amplifier and oscillator in 1911-13. Worldwide developments based on this research led to modern radio communication, television, and the electronics age. Location: In sidewalk, SE corner of Channing Ave and Emerson St, Palo Alto

Radio technologies preceded and prepared the way for electronics and semiconductors, and it was fueled with risk capital.

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Re:Silicon Valley: Abandoned by pg on Wednesday October 28, 2009 @03:26PM (#908522)
That is a somewhat misleading claim. Whatever area had turned out to be the center of the semiconductor industry, there would presumably have been some electronics firms there already.
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Re:Silicon Valley: Abandoned by skmurphy on Wednesday October 28, 2009 @07:34PM (#909127)
My argument is not that Silicon Valley was inevitable but that it takes a long time to grow an entrepreneurial region.

It's not misleading in raising the bar to areas/regions that want to be the next Silicon Valley and don't have an entrepreneurial substrate and appropriate ancillary services (e.g. attorneys, accountants, banks, that understand startups and entrepreneurs) to form a viable ecosystem.

I don't think the 100 years is misleading, if it had happened somewhere else (e.g. Boston) I think it would still have involved the same antecedents: major universities, risk capital, electronics firms...It may also have been important that it was primarily agricultural land that was pushed aside, if there had been other active industries they may have preferentially competed for the same talent.

Three good books I rely on for this analysis are

"Understanding Silicon Valley" by Kenney http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Silicon-Valley-Entrepren...

"The Silicon Valley Edge" by Lee, Miller, Hancock, and Rowen http://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Valley-Edge-Innovation-Entrepr...

"Regional Advantage" Saxenian http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-Competition...

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