Silicon Valley may be popular for innovation centers, but losing ground to Asia
venturebeat.com
venturebeat.com
Just like the rest of the world starting large universities has rarely had a negative effect on institutions like Oxford, Harvard or MIT, the rest of the world starting innovation center is unlikely to do much negatively to Silicon Valley.
Starting an 'innovation center' and actually creating lots of innovative companies (including some really large ones) are not the same thing at all. In fact, just like IITs are a great feeder into MIT or Stanford, some of the best companies outside Silicon Valley have become a feeder for the SV ecosystem.
I'm not saying it can't happen. I'm just saying quantity is not the same as quality, and quality innovation center is very hard to create without lots of quality people in all parts of the ecosystem.
It just isn't about aptitude, or even capital, but society has to be developed and free enough to let innovation happen. Where all the capital (human and financial) has accumulated (China), this simply isn't the case. We will continue to see young Chinese leaving for the west to realize their full potentials.
see parallel discussion on "China invents the digital totalitarian state" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13201926
So are Europeans and Latinos and Americans and Arabs and Africans and dolphins.
The discussion isn't about race. It's about creating a culture and ecosystem of innovation. Which even other cities in the US have failed to replicate beyond modest successes.
US has always been competitive because of its open immigration tightening it is not going to make much difference as other countries have even tougher immigration. Trump and his equating the color of a person skin with being illegal immigrant is going to hurt the US.
There are only 7 in the silicon valley? That seems... suspect. And only 2 in Tokyo? This whole article puzzles me.
It might as well read "Silicon Valley may well be a 7, but Asia is on its way with a couple of 2s and 3s."
What it actually talks about is 'large companies are opening more satellite offices around the world than in Silicon Valley in the last few years'.
The appropriate response to this article is: 'so what? How does that matter?'
- sounds like a fancy way of saying "outsourcing".
Compare that to SV which is like a backwards feudal kingdom.
The examples of "innovation" spouted now in SV are software and service frameworks, stuff like social networking and OS, and this stuff is backed by open source work performed by people from all over the world. In the big scheme of things today's Silicon Valley's so-called "innovation" is a big loser.
edit: It makes sense that technologically capable countries pursue their own technological infrastructure rather than have to depend on and pay US corporations simply for the privilege.
All Silicon Valley really provided was to "innovate" the traditional American business model and classism into their technological infrastructure.