Founder, Mayo615 Technology Partners Ltd., UBC adjunct faculty, Intel alumnus, technology assessment, international business, cleantech, fly fisherman, native Californian and citizen of France, who has been very fortunate to have traveled, lived and worked all over the globe. My wonderful wife, Isabelle has reintroduced me to my French Provençal heritage.
We are waiting to see how Harper‘s $400M very modest gesture to Canadian innovation will be invested, by whom, and how. We have had so many years stealing from Canada’s future, that one could easily claim that it is a moral travesty, depriving Canada of its future. The obvious problem is that Harper is not Vinod Khosla. Harper is a closet climate change denier. Harper’s vision is parochial and anti-democratic. While we have such a fragmented provincial political focus, we can only expect Harper to boost Alberta tar sands at the expense of the Canadian national economy and innovation.
This Techvibes article suggests that they may follow the Israeli government model, but the author is Israeli, has been there, done that, so she has some interesting insights.
This debate about Silicon Valley goes on ad nauseum, and in this Venture Beat post.
My answer to this guy is “it depends,” big time. It depends on a lot of factors, including the entrepreneur him or herself, access to money, brains, a “cluster” as this guy found in Austin Texas, well-known for not only IT management, as he points out. The University of Texas at Austin is key, and other companies there include IBM, AMD and Intel. Boulder, Colorado, northern Virginia, NYC, Boston, a bit in greater L.A./Orange County, and definitely San Diego are all happening, but in different segments, and in different ways.. Even very small communities like Walla Walla Washington have found ways to have an innovative economy…But there is still nothing quite like the breadth and scope of Silicon Valley, and it is unlikely to change anytime soon.
I just had a long talk Friday evening with a good friend, a consultant, as she was driving home in heavy SV commute traffic, who has worked in the Valley for her entire career. It still is a magnet and she has more clients than she can handle, but the company profiles are changing. Hollywood has moved north and not just Pixar stuff. Digital sound editing for some reason is in Daly City and South San Francisco. I remember one Canadian entrepreneur telling me how he felt the vibe in northern California. and it was a huge factor for him. Kelowna was dead, dead, dead. Vancouver was bit better, but SV was best for the buzz of ideas.
Well, what to do they say when you start believing your own BS? Does Zuckerberg actually believe investors will see him as the new Gordon Moore of social media? Seems to me that Zuckerberg needs to eat more of his own dog food, as they used to say at Microsoft. It would help Zuck to “focus his mind” on how his company is doing these days, rather than making outlandish, mathematically improbable projections, name dropping and comparing himself to Gordon Moore.
mayo615 