It's an interesting article. There's certainly a lot of untapped talent out there doing relatively menial work when they've shown capability to do very different and more effective things. Sponsoring such people or just being more likely to hire them could bring benefits. Well, it's already been proven by the companies doing it while reaping those benefits. Plus the occasional academic team asking for funding on something that might be a game-changer and is to some degree. So, we need more of it.

That said, the author is wrong about the title and doesn't get Silicon Valley. Most don't because they don't know the historical context of how it became what it is. If you want to re-create or beat it, you have to either imitate or improve on the components that went into creating it. This is the best article I've seen summarizing the big picture of how Silicon Valley came to be:

https://medium.com/backchannel/why-silicon-valley-will-conti...

Note: I bet many people didn't think Zuckerberg and others paid visits to the old guard to learn old lessons for IT. Probably thought it was all modern, fresh thinking "disrupting" the old stuff. A mix as usual. ;)