Innovation and Geography
Does geographical location exert an influence upon innovation? Certainly, and the New York Times recently published an article outlining why phenomena like the iPod, Google or eBay could only happen in Silicon Valley.
According to the article “Google’s astonishing rise and Apple’s reinvention are reminders that, when it comes to great ideas, location is crucial (…) face-to-face is still very important for exchange of ideas, and nowhere is this exchange more valuable than in Silicon Valley.”
There are many factors contributing to such innovative hegemony, including a vast pool of knowledge workers, abundance of venture capital, specialized suppliers and economies of scale.
There are some emerging technological poles around the world, specially in China, India and Eastern Europe, but it will take some time and well structure governmental interventions to replicate the Valle’s success.
You can read the full article here.
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ICQ, Skype, Blackberry, MySpace, CyWorld did not come from the Silcon Valley.
There is no doubt that SV is a great innovation ecosystem but the effect of geography is waning. Now leading-edge markets are no longer just in US; they are all over the world. Second, micro-multinationals are the norm among the startups. These companies keep their customer-focussed roles near the leading-edge markets and the engineering roles where the talent is. So the picture is much more nuanced than what the article makes it out to be.
I wrote an invited article recently about the IT innovation landscape in India http://orbitchange.com/blog/2007/02/09/innovation-landscape/ where I point out the similarities and differences with the SV model.
I think more globalization of innovation is inevitable.
Sharad, I agree with you that innovation is starting to spread around the globe, but right now 8 out of every 10 breaktrough innovations are coming from SV.
India is certainly on the road to become an innovation power house, but we will need to wait some years before we can see the fruits of that.