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Rethinking Silicon Valley: New Perspectives on Regional Development

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Silicon Valley in Southern California has, over the past 30 years, become a model for high technology development in many parts of the world. Associated with Silicon Valley is a common rhetoric and mythology that explains the origins of this area of high technology agglomeration and indeed the business and entrepreneurial attributes needed for success. Governments in many parts of the world (including Southeast Asia and Australia) have tried to emulate this growth through various industry and regional development mechanisms, in particular, the science or technology park. More recently, promoting developments in information technology has come to be seen as an integral feature of these parks’ activities. In this paper, we argue that the modeling process used by governments to promote Silicon Valley-like regional development has tended to model the wrong things about Silicon Valley. The models have tended to be mechanical and have failed to reflect the nature of information and information industries. While we have not sought to develop a model for Silicon Valley in this paper,we address a number of issues that require attention on the part of anyone serious about this project. After discussing problems with previous attempts to model Silicon Valley and problems associated with the activity of modeling itself, we move to consider four issues that must be addressed in any real attempt to model Silicon Valley in Southeast Asia. The first is the role of the state and the problems that state involvement may create. The second concerns the contribution that universities can make to the project. The third is the role of firms, particularly Chinese firms. The fourth is the cultural context within which the ‘model’ will sit. Since technology parks are seen as a popular way of promoting high technology development by governments, the revised history suggested in this paper provides fresh thinking about modeling Silicon Valley in the Southeast Asian region.

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By Ian Cook

Silicon Valley in Southern California has, over the past 30 years, become a model for high technology development in many parts of the world. Associated with Silicon Valley is a common rhetoric and mythology that explains the origins of this area of high technology agglomeration and indeed the business and entrepreneurial attributes needed for success. Governments in many parts of the world (including Southeast Asia and Australia) have tried to emulate this growth through various industry and regional development mechanisms, in particular, the science or technology park. More recently, promoting developments in information technology has come to be seen as an integral feature of these parks’ activities. In this paper, we argue that the modeling process used by governments to promote Silicon Valley-like regional development has tended to model the wrong things about Silicon Valley. The models have tended to be mechanical and have failed to reflect the nature of information and information industries. While we have not sought to develop a model for Silicon Valley in this paper,we address a number of issues that require attention on the part of anyone serious about this project. After discussing problems with previous attempts to model Silicon Valley and problems associated with the activity of modeling itself, we move to consider four issues that must be addressed in any real attempt to model Silicon Valley in Southeast Asia. The first is the role of the state and the problems that state involvement may create. The second concerns the contribution that universities can make to the project. The third is the role of firms, particularly Chinese firms. The fourth is the cultural context within which the ‘model’ will sit. Since technology parks are seen as a popular way of promoting high technology development by governments, the revised history suggested in this paper provides fresh thinking about modeling Silicon Valley in the Southeast Asian region.

page: 377 – 393
Prometheus: Critical Studies in Innovation
Volume 19, Issue 4

SKU: 0810-902810032435

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