What's standard bread&butter hustling in US is considered cringe-worthy BS in Europe.
While the music plays, there's no way business conservatism and sticking to "fundamentals" can compete with SV unicorns.
I've also heard that European investors are notoriously conservative in their strategies and don't take the risks that the US does. Japan is also faltering in this department for that reason. Without the pools of money to draw from, if you cannot gamble then you cannot win, essentially.
As odd as it sounds, my understanding is that China's Han population doesn't all speak the same language, but they (for the most part) read/write the same language. They call the variations in spoken language "dialects," but many of them are mutually unintelligible. I think the situation is the similar to a hypothetical one where the Romance countries (e.g. France, Spain, Italy, etc.) speak their respective modern languages, but continue to write exclusively in Latin.
Just a small unimportant quibble that doesn't negate your larger point.
Through innovative symbiosis between universities, business', talent, steady US defence spending, plentiful of financing and business friendly regulations it has become the preeminent tech sector only rivalled by the Chinese which was born out of protectionism. With the invention of the internet and the unprecedented level of free trade, a few companies from Silicon Valley has successfully monopolised large part of not only the US market but also the European market. And not only that, this was done in record speed, Facebook was only founded in 2004. Traditional manufacturing sectors are much more dependent on the local market than tech companies.
After the second world war Europe was destroyed and effort when in to rebuilding countries and relations. Furthermore the mindset that gave birth to Silicon Valley to combine raw capitalism with university campus' wouldn't have had a chance. Rigid universities, socialist political discourse and unions would have prevented it. Perhaps the mindset is changing, question is to what degree protectionism will be used to gain a footing in the vital tech sector.
1. There is no common language so hiring is typically restricted to one country.
2. Taxes are very high, particularly social security taxes that must be paid by the employer. Firms are very reluctant to create jobs.
3. A lot of bureaucracies are old and inefficient.
4. For the same reasons, products are difficult to scale. You can go from a local product in San Francisco to a national product in the USA relatively easily. But in the EU you are dealing with multiple languages, cultures, country bureaucracies in order to make the same jump.
The best thing for the EU would be to get everyone speaking English at least as a second language. Then, to require all official forms, Government engagement etc. to be in the national language and English.
Imagine you go from working in Warsaw to Berlin. A distance of only 570km, but you need to be able to speak Polish to deal with Polish bureaucracy, English to work at the multinational firm, and German to deal with German bureaucracy.