Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

WE NEED TO BE LIKE SILICON VALLEY

It is usually among the first questions I get asked as I travel around the world researching and talking about entrepreneurship, innovation, and venture capital. The question is, of course, how can we create our own Silicon Valley?

To save time, here is the answer to the Silicon Valley question: You can’t—you only think you want to.

Granted, everyone thinks they do. It has become a cliché, but there is a Silicon pretty much everywhere as you travel around, to the point that it is meaningless. It is also a reminder how many places get things confused, thinking that they can, by borrowing the trappings of the Bay area, create their own working facsimile of it.

The superficial trappings of Silicon Valley are obvious. They include: bountiful VC; research universities; lovely weather; a host of young technology startups; and a few large, successful companies. Further, weather aside, these trapping are surprisingly easily copied. You can attract VCs, especially if you offer state matching funds or subsidies; you can build or rebrand research universities; and you can start trumpeting various local startups and tech companies. This, of course, never works in the long term, as the discarded Silicon-everywhere names should tell you.

What is wrong with mimicking Silicon Valley in an effort to create your own? It is cargo-cult startup-community creation, not unlike the post–World War II stories of island cultures in the Pacific that created fake runways ...