Tim,
I don't want to sound argumentative, but you seem to be reaching a little... if you want to say that ultimately, at the root of all invention there was once a university, or a book, or an elementary school, and therefore relocating all companies and technology won't matter because certain elementary schools are not present, well- so be it.
I know for a fact the Lisa division at Apple was crawling with Parc people, and without that talent base, Mac probably never would have gotten off the ground. If you want me to name names I will but there isn't any point in my view, maybe the apple guys weren't the ones that INVENTED whatever it was about gui's... the point is they were key members at Parc and learned whatever was necessary at Xerox and so it it wasn't on Apple's dime.
Maybe you are correct that proximity isn't *all there is* to building a company based on an emerging technology, but it helps imo. My personal opinion is that Silicon Valley probably just lucked out with a few key companies early on, that happened to be here, (HP Fairchild etc) and that was it. I believe thats what happened with enterprise software at least, which was a new area... a few companies in the bay area pioneered the technology and peoplesoft and siebel happened along because of it.
Maybe because I do more marketing these days I don't put the spinoffs in a lower category all the time. I know what you mean about spinoffs - sure maybe not the MOST innovative, but sometimes you get a spinoff that takes the parent out, based on (gasp) marketing expertise <gg>. |
