Making people and ideas findable
Should Smaller Indiana strive to be like Silicon Valley?
Nwodkedi Idika only arrived at Smaller Indiana Yesterday, but he immediately caught my attention when he said, "I'm hoping to meet others who want to see the Midwest become more like Silicon Valley."
What do you think of this goal? Should we strive to be like Silicon Valley?
Before you answer this questions, you might want to consider: how did Silicon Valley become the hotbed of technology that it is today? What makes it tick? And how has it sustained itself over time even as other regional technology clusters have tried to emulate its success?
If you need a bit more background / perspective on this topic, here's a good article describing the differences between Silicon Valley and other U.S. technology hotbeds. Excerpt from article: As world markets strive to be the "Silicon Valley of (fill in the blank), the differences even among U.S. geographies has me thinking what makes Silicon Valley so different from other geographies that have the same raw ingredients you'll find in the 57-mile stretch from San Jose to San Francisco.
There is a marked difference between the Valley and Valley wannabes. This difference is the intangible "it" that is as difficult to describe as it is to replicate. The spirit and culture of entrepreneurship thrive in Silicon Valley. It is a culture that eschews stability and certainty. When a business fails, its people scatter to new ventures that are the basis of new possibility and economic growth. (Read whole article here).
If you have an academic interest in this topic, check out a book called "Clusters, Networks and Innovation," by Stefano Breschi and Franco Malerba (Oxford University Press). One interesting side note from that book examines another technology region in Hsinchu-Tapei, Taiwan:
"...the authors argue that a key ingredient to their success has been the contributions given by a community of US-educated engineers who have built social and economic linkages between Silicon Valley and Hsinchu economies. This technical community formed during the 1970's and 80's as US educated Taiwanese engineers started to organize collectively and form professional networks and organizations. The reversal of this "brain drain", spurred by the acccelerated growth of the economy in the 80's, thus brought back to Taiwan an increasing number of returnees with strong professional and personal ties to Silicon Valley. Moreover, a growing population of new "argonauts", constantly travelling between companies with activities in both regions, also contributed to establish and co-ordinate a sustained flow of technical knowledge, skills, contacts, capital, and information about new opportunities and new markets. The development of this transnational technical community has also transformed the relationship between the Silicon Valley and Hsinchu economies from one-way to more decentralized two-way flows of technology, skills, and capital, but highly complementary capabilities."
This section goes on to say that multi-national corporations may no longer be the best way for ideas and innovation to spread globally. Innovation spreads as much through social and professional networks of people working on a local level.
There's no arguing with Silicon Valley's success, but it's harder to pin down the reasons why the region has been able to sustain its competitive advantage in the entrepreneurial, high tech arena. Is it the geography which clusters innovative companies closely together? Is it the social networks that connect workers across company lines? Is it the presence of venture capital? Is the the overall risk-taking mindset that seems to pervade the region? Is it the constant influx of bright minds who migrate there who help sustain the environment of innovation?
Should we immitate the "valley"? Can we immitate the "valley"?
Are we better served to immitate Silicon Valley? Or might we be better served to cooperate with the region as the Taiwanese engineers have done? What if we organized our own team of "argonauts" to live on the Silicon Valley "planet" for a time, and bring back to Indiana the knowledge and networks necessary to participate in the Silicon Valley ecosystem?
Or maybe that's already happening??
What do you think of this goal? Should we strive to be like Silicon Valley?
Before you answer this questions, you might want to consider: how did Silicon Valley become the hotbed of technology that it is today? What makes it tick? And how has it sustained itself over time even as other regional technology clusters have tried to emulate its success?
If you need a bit more background / perspective on this topic, here's a good article describing the differences between Silicon Valley and other U.S. technology hotbeds. Excerpt from article: As world markets strive to be the "Silicon Valley of (fill in the blank), the differences even among U.S. geographies has me thinking what makes Silicon Valley so different from other geographies that have the same raw ingredients you'll find in the 57-mile stretch from San Jose to San Francisco.
There is a marked difference between the Valley and Valley wannabes. This difference is the intangible "it" that is as difficult to describe as it is to replicate. The spirit and culture of entrepreneurship thrive in Silicon Valley. It is a culture that eschews stability and certainty. When a business fails, its people scatter to new ventures that are the basis of new possibility and economic growth. (Read whole article here).
If you have an academic interest in this topic, check out a book called "Clusters, Networks and Innovation," by Stefano Breschi and Franco Malerba (Oxford University Press). One interesting side note from that book examines another technology region in Hsinchu-Tapei, Taiwan:
"...the authors argue that a key ingredient to their success has been the contributions given by a community of US-educated engineers who have built social and economic linkages between Silicon Valley and Hsinchu economies. This technical community formed during the 1970's and 80's as US educated Taiwanese engineers started to organize collectively and form professional networks and organizations. The reversal of this "brain drain", spurred by the acccelerated growth of the economy in the 80's, thus brought back to Taiwan an increasing number of returnees with strong professional and personal ties to Silicon Valley. Moreover, a growing population of new "argonauts", constantly travelling between companies with activities in both regions, also contributed to establish and co-ordinate a sustained flow of technical knowledge, skills, contacts, capital, and information about new opportunities and new markets. The development of this transnational technical community has also transformed the relationship between the Silicon Valley and Hsinchu economies from one-way to more decentralized two-way flows of technology, skills, and capital, but highly complementary capabilities."
This section goes on to say that multi-national corporations may no longer be the best way for ideas and innovation to spread globally. Innovation spreads as much through social and professional networks of people working on a local level.
There's no arguing with Silicon Valley's success, but it's harder to pin down the reasons why the region has been able to sustain its competitive advantage in the entrepreneurial, high tech arena. Is it the geography which clusters innovative companies closely together? Is it the social networks that connect workers across company lines? Is it the presence of venture capital? Is the the overall risk-taking mindset that seems to pervade the region? Is it the constant influx of bright minds who migrate there who help sustain the environment of innovation?
Should we immitate the "valley"? Can we immitate the "valley"?
Are we better served to immitate Silicon Valley? Or might we be better served to cooperate with the region as the Taiwanese engineers have done? What if we organized our own team of "argonauts" to live on the Silicon Valley "planet" for a time, and bring back to Indiana the knowledge and networks necessary to participate in the Silicon Valley ecosystem?
Or maybe that's already happening??
Tags: entrepreneur, entrepreneurial, i.t., indiana, silicon, smaller, technology, valley
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Ben Fulton on -
Students are all well and good, but you need a good mix of people with many levels of experience to have a good team. There are some positions I wouldn't be comfortable hiring anyone for unless they had a degree AND five or ten years of practical experience.
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Permalink Reply by Bruce LaDuke on -
It's been my experience that IT resources, and human resources in general, clamber to get involved in projects on the cutting edge of knowledge working in any field. Working in futuring, I see people volunteer to help without pay, just because they want to make a difference and want to learn what the 'next wave' is all about.
The main problem with Indiana is that we have a pretty short list of things on the cutting edge (at the least in terms of how we are perceived in a national or international sense) and our governance and social systems tend to keep it that way. It's a bit of the 'good old boy' network syndrome.
When I go to futuring conferences around the country and start speaking with my deep southern Indiana accent, I almost always get a lot of low giggles and 'I feel sorry for you' looks at first. Southern accent = stupid, basically. But then I challenge their minds and way of thinking and I think it literally blows their minds that deep thinking came out of what they perceive to be 'a corn field.'
There are lots of deep thinkers with deep expertise in this state and I know that we can create a mind-blowing community. But the focus needs to be on establishing thought leaders and cutting edge efforts. Get out in front of everyone else (in any specialty) and resources will come to you. I'd challenge everyone in this forum to list the areas where we are truly leading the nation or world. I believe it is a very short list. And that's boring...who wants to come to, or stay with, that?
On a slightly separate note, I met a person a few months ago that headed up a 'charter institute' which was basically a repeatable and 'free" system to envision, charter, diaolg, connect (people), and implement some worthy change. This group defined every effort as an 'enterprise' including business, not-for-profit, volunteer, community, etc. and created / proved a 'template' for execution. That's right along the lines of what Nwokedi proposed above in a Startup Hub.
This was a great thing, but I do believe it needed to go a little deeper than setting up a traditional entrepreneurial machine. Our world is moving fast into multiple, simultaneous, exponential revolutions. These days, you can do everything right in the traditional sense and still miss the mark by a mile because you lack foresight to respond to change and volatility. I agree with Steve's three points above. We need to:
1) See it coming (good and bad) and become adaptive to quickly adjust to opportunities and needs that emerge.
2) Create e-forums for cutting edge interaction and connections (smaller Indiana), deep adaptive learning, and dialog or group problem solving. Achieve a balance of interests between knowledge advance, social context, and economy. See my futuring manifesto here:
http://www.integralfuturing.com/index.php?option=com_content&ta...
3) Create a charter institute or Startup hub that funds efforts and projects in line with a clear future vision and thirst to be support efforts on or near the cutting edge. Enable people to see, connect, and implement by building transformational and traditional capacities in a formal network of change agents / evangelists.
Everyone wants to contribute in an exciting, vibrant, cutting-edge future. It's fun and basic human nature to explore. Make supporting that journey in individuals the central focus of all of our efforts and funding, and you won't be able to contain all of the talent that comes running to be a part of the 'next wave.'
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Permalink Reply by Lorraine Ball on -
One suggestion, take someone house hunting in Texas, California and Indy. One of our competitve advantages is the quality of life we can offer indivdiuals and their families. And iI don't think we sell it often enouhg!
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Permalink Reply by Tom Britt on -
Anyone that has tried to raise money or experienced a winter in Indianapolis knows why it will never be the Silicon Valley. I can appreciate the intellect behind some of these posts, but frankly you are all crazy if you even think that Indianapolis will EVER be a hotbed for technology.
We don't have a lot of "smart" money in this town, only a lot of manufacturing money which doesn't help a start-up very much (unless you are developing truck trailers or caskets). What the valley has is connections (to quote an earlier post) and that my friends is the name of the game. We have Scott Jones who has a lot of money, not as many connections.
If you think an entrepreneur program at a state school will cause a wave of change, don't drink the kool aid.
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Permalink Reply by Kevin Makice on -
I appreciate the dose of reality in the thinking here, but I don't accept the conclusion. Any current difficulty in getting money to invest in tech initiatives is a current problem, not an inevitable one.
Infrastructure problems can be corrected. Focus can be shifted to different demographics. Communities can be built.
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Permalink Reply by Nwokedi C. Idika on -
Tom: "frankly you are all crazy"
Howard Hughes: "Passion will make you crazy, but is there any other way to live??"
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Permalink Reply by Nwokedi C. Idika on
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Now more formally, Boston is probably the next biggest hotbed of technology. I think our weather is better than Boston's. The cost of starting a tech startup these days is nominal. We don't need the money per se, we need the "startup expertise," and they got a ton of that in the Valley.
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Permalink Reply by Lorraine Ball on
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We may never be as robust a start up community as Silicon Valley, but we can be more than we are today.
Orgainzations like: The Indiana Business Incubator Society (IBIS), are a great starting point. As are projects like the Bloomington Start-up. We can focus on the fact that we haven't had much venture cap or connections in the past, or we can focus on how to attract it in the future.
Personally, I prefer to focus on what we can do in the future.
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Permalink Reply by Nwokedi C. Idika on
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I'm with you 1000%!
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Permalink Reply by Kyle Lacy on -
There are also incubators like the Flagship Enterprise Center in Anderson.
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Permalink Reply by Nwokedi C. Idika on
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Lastly (for real this time), they also said you couldn't build a Casino in the desert...
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Permalink Reply by Kyle Lacy on
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I don't want to go GOSPEL on all of you but they also told Bill Gaither that his Homecoming video would not work.
Last time I checked, he was on number 96.
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1. Please use your real name (first and last) when you sign up, or we cannot open your account
2. Please do not use logos or commercial images for your profile photo
3. Events should be posted in the events calendar
4. You can post pretty much anything you want on your own personal page (self promotion, etc), and you can change the style of your personal profile page to reflect your corporate identification if you so choose.
5. Please keep all comments civil and polite. It's OK to feel strongly about a subject, and it's OK to be critical of ideas, but please refrain from personal attacks of any kind.
If you witness or experience any issues, please contact admin@smallerindiana.com and we will look into the matter.
6. Smaller Indiana is supported by its members, and by corporate sponsors. If you're interested in learning more about sponsorship, please call Pat Coyle at 317 332 7878.
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