The ongoing ability of Silicon Valley to generate innovations, growth, good jobs and rising income has led much of the world to seek to define and replicate its key elements.
Silicon Valley is not just a one-time-onlyphenomenon . Allthe lessons derived from its experience may be applied at other times,in other places to some extend. The fact that mayors, governors,andotherofficialsfromall over the world flock to Santa Clara County,then return home to nickname their aspiring high-technology area \"Silicon Village\" or \"Silicon Valley Land\" shows the degree to which they accept Silicon Valley as the model for what they are trying to create.
What Silicon Valley and Boston's Route 128 have in common is they both have at least one research university, Stanford for Silicon Valley, and MIT for Route 128. Each of these research universities has policies that facilitatetechnology transfer through close industry university relationships. Each university is stronginengineering , andengineering professors take the lead in spinning off new high-technology firms. Today computer science and biomedical professors arealsoincreasingly engaged inentrepreneurialactivities .Engineering, computer science and biomedicine are all highly applied university fields. They do not exist as academic disciplines without commercial firms to exploit the advances in basic knowledgethat aremade by university scholars.
In an information society the university (particularly the research university,where the production of Ph.D.s and the conduct of scientific research is a main activity) is the central institution, much as the factory was in the previous era of the industrial society.It is not an accident that most high technology systems in the United States are centered around a prestigious research university.A nearby source of well-trained graduates for work in high-technology firms,plus a steady flow of research-based technologies,are important contributions by the research university to a \"Silicon Valley\".
In a word, universities are a source of ideas, advice, new scientists and engineers and can be a source of life long learning.
There are also some other factors that made Silicon Valley a successful model. There is always a demand for new products which encourages the innovation. Early innovations stimulated competitors, attracted suppliers, and lured scientists, engineers, and entrepreneurs. Silicon Valley has also developed a cluster of talent, suppliers, and competitors that creates an attractive base for further innovation. Traditional studies of industrial clustering have focused on the specific features of the industries in question to explain the origins and growth of such clustering.There is little doubt that Silicon Valley hosts several such clusters. In fact,many regard Silicon Valley as a quintessential case of industrial clustering.The characteristic that sets Silicon Valley apart from many regions and creates difficulty for most theoretical explanations of industrial clustering is the region's ability to periodically generate new industries and clusters.Well-established industries are renewed at the same time as entrepreneurs leave older firms to exploit new possibilities in the same industry,or perhaps to create entirely new types of firms. Silicon Valley is even more intriguing,because not only is it a productive site for the creation of new firms,technologies,and industries but it also has fostered the development of innovative new business models.
Silicon Valley hosts a set of interdependent institutions that observers have termed a \"social structure of innovation\". Silicon Valley can be considered as two intertwined but analytically separable economies. The first set of organizations consists of established firms,corporate research laboratories,and universities. Silicon Valley,however,has another set of organizations that combine to create an economy predicated on facilitating entrepreneurs in the creation of new firms.This other economy is the trait that sets it apart from most other regions of industrial clustering.
The Silicon Valley model has not only spread over the US,but has gone worldwide-to France,Germany, Japan and China.