Don't Hold Your Breath
G Pascal Zachary pens a great piece on the geography-is-destiny argument about San Francisco as the epicenter for innovation in tech:
[from When It Comes to Innovation, Geography Is Destiny - New York Times]SIR PETER HALL, the British scholar of urban clusters, asks in “Cities in Civilization,” his history of geography and business innovation: “What makes a particular city, at a particular time, suddenly become immensely creative, exceptionally innovative? Why should this spirit flower for a few years, generally a decade or two at most, and then disappear as suddenly as it came?”
Sir Peter’s words highlight an enduring human mystery. In the case of Silicon Valley, the world rightly waits for the flame of creativity to burn out. That’s fair enough. To each, a season (or maybe a few). Living long and large, Silicon Valley surely will wither like a dead flower someday. My advice, though, is: Don’t hold your breath.
Well, it looks like The City By The Sea is holding it's lead, and I bet that we will remain at the vanguard for the next decade.
My guess is that it has more to do with Sand Hill Road than anything else. Sparks of creativity appear everywhere, but without a ready source of fuel it usually withers and dies.
I live in a small country in East Europe, and I can tell you that I have witnessed all the ideas that have later made the headlines being developed here years ago; but without capital they lagged behind and usually smothered before anyone could hear about them.
Posted by: Berislav Lopac | February 12, 2007 at 01:39 AM