Even as Silicon Valley was still in its infancy, a group of organizations including Bell, MCI, GM, and others hired Fred Terman from Stanford to make NJ more like what Silicon Valley (NJ and SV share a ton of similarities, i did a tedx talk about it below [1]) but Terman was unsuccessful. He pointed to how Princeton was not focused enough on applied science the way Stanford was. East coast politics and stock market downturn also hindered his efforts.

Also, don't forget Fort Monmouth, which was across the county, employed an equal number of scientists and was responsible for nearly as many inventions as Bell Labs (much classified). It was the home of the Army's software and signal operations. Just like Silicon Valley, the military kickstarted the world's most productive innovation cores.

New Jersey had (and continues to have) the richest concentration of scientists in the United States. Monmouth County and the Princeton had, for a very long time, the kind of serendipity that makes Silicon Valley so special—that you can walk down the street and bump into a bunch of engineers and VCs while walking your dog and strike up a conversation.

State politics in NJ, unfortunately, doesn't nurture these institutions and the ecosystem has grown weaker. It breaks my heart that Bell Labs is a mall and Fort Monmouth lays fallow when it should be bid out to universities to become the Stanford of the East—the applied sciences university that Fred Terman dreamed about.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2LbuqoNGGI

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Monmouth

[3] http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/sep/06/...