Re-understanding Silicon Valley (Part Two)

In the last article, the Silicon Valley model is difficult to replicate for different reasons. Let's first take a look at various popular sayings about Silicon Valley. Some of these statements are reasonable, but they are incomplete. Others are contrary to the facts.

The climate of Silicon Valley belongs to the Mediterranean climate. Unlike most land areas, there are only two seasons here-dry season and rainy season. From June 10 to April of the following year, it will rain intermittently in the second half of the year, but sunny days can still account for about two-thirds of the whole year. From April to 10, it is sunny every day here. The climate of San Francisco Bay Area is basically maintained at 15-28℃ all the year round, which can be said to be like spring all the year round, and it is one of the most livable places in the world.

The reason why Silicon Valley can last forever is attributed to Stanford University, which continuously delivers new technologies and outstanding talents to Silicon Valley, and even directly breeds new companies leading the next generation of science and technology.

Venture capital is absolutely necessary for starting a business, and it is also helpful for the long-term prosperity of a region.

The economic rise of many regions is related to government support.

Protecting intellectual property rights has always been considered to be conducive to encouraging inventions and promoting the development of science and technology.

Although climate factors, Stanford's contribution and the role of venture capital all contribute to the success of Silicon Valley, they are far from the decisive factors as reported by some media, and government support and protection of supporting property rights have little to do with the success of Silicon Valley. Therefore, the success of Silicon Valley must have its deeper and more essential reasons, and to understand these, we must first start from the birth and development of Silicon Valley.

1777, the Spanish established a colony in San Jose at the southern tip of San Francisco, and most of the place names of Silicon Valley came from Spanish. The traditional "American" power is not strong in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is an important reason why the Silicon Valley area can form multiculturalism later.

The development of a region often stems from some seemingly accidental factors, and so does the origin of Silicon Valley. There is an old saying in China that success requires the right place at the right time.

1952, IBM decided to build a laboratory on the west coast, bringing a large number of high-level scientific and technological talents, especially those in the computer field, to the Bay Area.

The Stanford couple's will stipulates that the school should never sell land. After careful study, Terman found that there were no restrictions on the long-term lease of land by universities, so he proposed a solution to the financial crisis-establishing a science park to lease land for a long time.

On September 1957 and 18, Noyce and other eight people submitted their resignation reports to shockley, and Shockley called them eight traitors. The word "traitor" has become a commendatory term in Silicon Valley culture, which represents an entrepreneurial spirit that rebelled against tradition. This spirit not only created the legend of Silicon Valley, but also inspired several generations in Silicon Valley to constantly adjust their traditions and boldly explore the future.

IBM just opened a research and development center on the west coast of the United States when computer technology was just starting, which made the San Francisco Bay Area occupy the right place and the right time. At that time, the place with the best climate in the world had dozens of square kilometers of land, which could be provided to future new technology companies and occupied a favorable position; A Nobel Prize winner gathered a group of the best technical talents in the world by fame, and then kicked them out to set up a company, which prepared the human factor for the Bay Area to become a Silicon Valley in the future.

With the arrival of a large number of companies, the birth of Fairchild, the invention of integrated circuits, the rise of hippies and the influx of immigrants from all over the world, the San Francisco Bay Area has experienced unprecedented prosperity in history. Up to now, the development of Silicon Valley can be divided into three stages:

Fairchild played an important role in the first stage of the development of Silicon Valley. First of all, it sets the tone for the development of Silicon Valley, that is, it does not take national defense, military industry and large government systems supported by the government as the main industries in Silicon Valley, but produces semiconductors that everyone and every industry in the world need. The second function is not only to make the whole Silicon Valley region benefit from the semiconductor industry through the way of letting a hundred flowers blossom, but also to prepare funds and talents for the future transformation of Silicon Valley through derivative venture capital.

From the mid-1970s to the end of 1980s, the traditional software industry rose. The second stage is the 1990s, that is, the period of explosive development of the Internet. The first large multinational company in the world to benefit from the development of Internet is Cisco in Silicon Valley. It took only six years from its establishment to its listing, and it also created many myths in the stock market. After Cisco, various Internet companies mushroomed in Silicon Valley and then went public. In the late 1990s, the most popular choice in Silicon Valley was to start your own company, followed by working for Internet companies such as Yahoo, and finally for big companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Apple.

The improvement of business efficiency and the orientation of capital brought by the Internet have accelerated the process of elimination. Of course, the company's winning speed is also very fast. Once a company in a certain industry starts to win, it will start to take over the market at a very fast speed and become a large multinational company, which has become a major feature of Silicon Valley.

In the era of Silicon Valley 3.0, despite the rising costs there, in Silicon Valley, both large and small companies have maintained strong competitiveness on a global scale because of their strong creativity and flexible management methods, which have made Silicon Valley evergreen.

From the birth and development of Silicon Valley, we can see its great differences in time and space with the United States and even other industrialized regions in the world. In terms of time, it rose in the late industrial age, specifically after World War II. From the beginning, Silicon Valley has skipped many processes in the industrial age, and it is an industrial center established according to the characteristics of the information age, such as the special relationship between people. Geographically, it also has characteristics that are not found in other parts of the world, such as multiculturalism and tolerance of foreign things.

Silicon Valley's tolerance for treason is selective. Its tolerance can lead to the rebellion of technological progress, while pure plagiarism is not tolerated. The former is N+ 1 rebellion, that is, it can be built on the original basis by climbing a flight of stairs. On the other hand, 10 years ago, some new companies in China were derived from the original companies. Many of them just master the technical backbone and sales staff of market resources, simply repeat the business of the original company, and then compete with the original company at a low level through price war, that is, the products produced by the cottage machine, which will reduce the profits of the whole industry and not help the technological progress and industrial upgrading in the region.

Relying on multiculturalism, Silicon Valley is like a black hole, attracting talents from all over the world. Many companies find it difficult to compete with Silicon Valley companies because they are not actually competing with companies from any country, but with the whole world.

Wealth is created, and to create wealth, we must give it to those promising industries, to those great companies and to those who pursue Excellence. In the long run, only creating more wealth is the best way to eliminate poverty. Although there is a large flow of people in Silicon Valley, and temporary unemployment is common, on the whole, because of refusing mediocrity and creating more and more wealth, the society is stable and the economy is prosperous.

Rebellion and tolerance, multiculturalism and rejection of mediocrity are the essential characteristics of the highest level in Silicon Valley, which fundamentally guarantee the success of Silicon Valley. At the next level, that is, specific to business, investment, enterprise management and development planning, Silicon Valley also has many methodologies and values that are not found in other parts of the world. These corporate cultures and feelings reveal the other side of the mystery of Silicon Valley's success.

1) Culture of tolerance for failure: Silicon Valley's tolerance for failure is not only reflected in its attitude towards entrepreneurship, but also in its tolerance for project failure within the company. Apple, Google and other companies will carry out many projects at the same time, but the number of products seen by the outside world is very limited, because most of them have died, but Google has never seen a case in which the project failed to leave because it cost the company a lot of money and resources.

2) Engineer culture: It reflects the characteristics of management and methodology of Silicon Valley companies, not just income.

3) Not superstitious about authority

4) Flat management

5) the feeling of the world

Whether it can help people all over the world and whether there is a revolutionary breakthrough.

The magic of Silicon Valley lies not in how much GDP it produces, but in that it constantly leads the trend of world science and technology development and constantly produces great companies, thus changing human life. To do this, we first need to have the feelings of the world. A company can't aim at profit completely, but also have dreams. Of course, it is not enough to have dreams, but also to have enough courage to constantly challenge authority and limits.

It is impossible for one or two people to do great things. Many people need to cooperate with each other and work together. Therefore, the relationship between people in an enterprise can no longer be a simple employment relationship or a hierarchical relationship, but a contractual relationship based on the modern enterprise system. All people involved in a cause, regardless of rank or seniority, gather together for the same purpose, and they bind their interests together through a contract.

The culture and management of Silicon Valley have different scientific basis and methodology from other regions. And look at the next article ↓↓↓↓