Silicon Valley, synonymous with the knowledge economy, accounts for 1% of the U.S. population, creates 13% of U.S. patents, and has more than 50 Nobel Prize winners. Silicon Valley is the center of entrepreneurship and innovation, and it receives about 30% of the venture capital in the United States every year.Silicon Valley is the habitat for outstanding companies. 20 of the world’s top 100 technology companies are located in Silicon Valley: HP, Cisco, Intel, Apple, Oracle, Google, eBay, Applied Materials, Yahoo, VISA, Adobe ( Adobe), Facebook, Twitter.
The birth and development of Silicon Valley relied on three opportunities in the early days:
The first was in the 1950s, when Terman, Dean of Stanford University’s School of Engineering, proposed to lease Stanford’s vast land to industry and thus established the Stanford Science Park.
The second is that IBM established the famous Almaden Research Center in the southern part of Silicon Valley in 1952, which brought the world’s top engineers and scientists to Silicon Valley.
Third, and probably the most important, in the early 1960s, the “eight traitors” of Shockley Transistor founded Fairchild Semiconductor, the mother of most semiconductor companies, from which it was separated and derived The companies that came out included Intel and AMD.
Therefore, the first rule of Silicon Valley’s success is to grasp the development opportunities given to it by the times. But if this alone is not enough, Silicon Valley is likely to decline along with the deceleration of the development of the conductor industry and eventually the decline of the core industry.On the contrary, Silicon Valley has been prosperous, and despite rising labor costs, it remains the world’s most competitive technology innovation center.
So what exactly is the reason for Silicon Valley’s success?
Some people say that Silicon Valley’s success is because it has attracted a lot of talent. But in fact, the local government of Silicon Valley itself has not paid a cent for talent introduction. On the contrary, it also collects various taxes. Others say it’s because of venture capital. Therefore, many science and technology parks have also established venture funds, but the return on these investments is not as high as that of Silicon Valley, and many have even been losing money. Others say it’s because of its proximity to Stanford University. Therefore, many places began to build technology parks in university towns, but Stanford University was only a second-class university in the United States in the 1950s. It can become today’s world-class university, which is largely the result of the success of Silicon Valley. rather than the cause.
What makes Silicon Valley in the end? What is the real reason for Silicon Valley’s success?
The first is advanced production relations. In traditional capitalist society, capitalists obtain most of the surplus value, while Silicon Valley has created a relatively fair way of redistributing profits. “That’s it: giving everyone his share of wealth through shares and options.” That’s why Silicon Valley is the fastest place to create millionaires, and that attracts the best minds from all over the world. . The second is a relaxed entrepreneurial environment. In Silicon Valley, the respect for creativity and invention is above all else.Then there is the diversified cultural atmosphere. The most creative places must be those with diverse cultures. Many of the inventions and creations of Americans came not from Americans born in the United States, but from immigrants.
The diversified culture makes the company in Silicon Valley an international company from a very young age, which is very different from the companies in other countries in the world. The latter are often successful in their own countries, but internationalization is very difficult because there is no diversified culture in the company.Silicon Valley was not born out of thin air. Its powerful impetus for innovation and entrepreneurship comes from its dynamic system, which has profound historical and cultural origins.
Silicon Valley’s contribution lies in its ability to identify inventions that have the potential to disrupt society, exploit them commercially, and use it to rapidly create wealth. And have a unique sense of smell to understand the significance of an invention to human civilization. Compared with technological inventions, Silicon Valley is better at cultivating technology, even if it is corporate. So those research centers in Silicon Valley were never really “research” centers, but “R&D” centers—they were more “development” than “research”. Forward-looking education, open talent flow, relaxed immigration system, active and diverse ideology and culture, coupled with perfect legal, financial, human resources, market and other auxiliary service systems, these together constitute the cornerstone of the rapid development of Silicon Valley.
Digging Secrets of Silicon Valley’s Innovation Culture
- Start small and constantly seek for scale
Silicon Valley is not only focused on profitable business models, but also on scalable opportunities. Silicon Valley, for example, tried to subvert the traditional car dealership model, similar to the style of Apple Stores, and opened Tesla car stores in malls. As Tesla became mainstream, the stock rose 40% last year.
- Innovate with customers, not for customers
Many Silicon Valley companies have opted to upend some notions, such as the linear process of innovation that defines the market and creating products to meet demand, as some corporate marketers believe, through business models based on customer “co-creation.”
- Bethe disruption
A study by Booz & Company found that only 20% of all global companies reinforced their business strategy with an innovation strategy. In Silicon Valley, the study says, it’s 90%.Many Silicon Valley companies develop innovative strategies to support business strategies that lead others to perceive the entire business as disruptive innovation. These Silicon Valley companies have managed to focus on making the biggest difference and experience for their customers.
How to view the impact of the Internet era on social development?
The Internet is the decisive technology of today’s information age. This global computer network is mainly based on today’s wireless communication platforms. The Internet is not a new technology; its ancestor, Arpanet, was first deployed in 1996 (Abbate 1999). After being privatized in the 1990s and out of control of the U.S. deployment, it began to spread around the world on a large scale.According to statistics, in 1996, the first survey on Internet users counted about 40 million; in 2013, China had the largest number of Internet users, exceeding 2.5 billion.
The network trend of the current society has become more and more obvious, and the Internet has gradually opened up a new value space based on various Internet technologies. , Driven by the Industrial Internet, a large number of industry resources are also gathering in the Internet field, and the Internet is gradually turning away from the virtual with the help of the Industrial Internet.
Against the background of the current industrial Internet development, the Internet is becoming a new driving force for the development of the industrial field. Therefore, in the future, if people want to gain more development opportunities, they should actively embrace the Internet.Social media is moving in more directions, and it has to be more innovative if it is to continue to work.
Reference
Sore, K. (2002). Tap Into The 7 Secrets Of Silicon Valley’s Innovation Culture.
Retrieved 14, November 2002, from
https://www.fastcompany.com/3026220/tap-into-the-7-secrets-of-silicon-valleys-innovation-culture
Manuel, C. (2014). The Impact of the Internet on Society: A Global Perspective. From
https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/the-impact-of-the-internet-on-society-a-global-perspective/
Zaryn, D. How the Internet Has Changed Everyday Life. From
https://www.bbvaopenmind.com/en/articles/internet-changed-everyday-life/
