What is it about NW USA that makes it such a hotbed for entrepreneuralism?
November 14, 2006 4:12 PM Subscribe
What is it about NW USA that makes it such a hotbed for entrepreneuralism?
What is it that makes NW USA such a hotbed for entrepreneuralism? All the so-called "cutting-edge brands" seem to emanante from this area. Whether it be Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft or Amazon - they all seem to have started in the Pacific Northwest.
So is there something in the air or is there something more to it than that?
What is it that makes NW USA such a hotbed for entrepreneuralism? All the so-called "cutting-edge brands" seem to emanante from this area. Whether it be Nike, Starbucks, Microsoft or Amazon - they all seem to have started in the Pacific Northwest.
So is there something in the air or is there something more to it than that?
(actually, make that three which are over 30 years old)
posted by xil at 4:37 PM on November 14, 2006
posted by xil at 4:37 PM on November 14, 2006
You're also ignoring equally yeasty companies like Intel (Bay area) and Qualcomm (San Diego). I agree with Xil: this is simply a case of confirmation bias.
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:42 PM on November 14, 2006
posted by Steven C. Den Beste at 4:42 PM on November 14, 2006
Microsoft played a large role - it created a lot of wealthy individuals that went off to do their own thing, and for a lot of them, that was to fund their own entrepreneurial vision.
posted by -harlequin- at 4:44 PM on November 14, 2006
posted by -harlequin- at 4:44 PM on November 14, 2006
Nike is an Oregon company, and Oregon has it's own particular dynamics. I suspect there is a lot of confirmation bias underlying your question. That said, Seattle has some things going for it.
It's probably worth looking at its early years. Early industry was primarily extractive (logging & fishing), but then came the Yukon gold rush and Seattle became a gateway to alaska. Fortunes were made supplying the prospectors headed to alaska. Few of them made any money, but those that did ended up spending a lot of it in Seattle. This gave Seattle commercial foundations, capital, and a population looking to make a fortune, and a workforce with business skills.
In later years Seattle scored the University of Washington, which brought expertise. World War II breathed new life into our aircraft industry, which attracted a skilled workforce of machinists and engineers. Boeing's hard times in the 70s put a lot of those people out of work, which created a cheap labor pool for new industries (and lowered housing prices). Some people think that the hangover from Boeing's hard times gave Microsoft fertile ground for hiring engineers in its early years. A powerful Senator helped secure major money for the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research center, which, in conjunction with the University, helped seed the local biotech industry.
Having established itself, Seattle has drawn the best and brightest from other parts of its region, and the rest of the country. It's beauty and natural amenities made it attractive to silicon valley refugees fleeing high Bay Area housing prices through the 90s.
Taken together, these factors create a virtuous cycle as captital and ambition combine with financial, marketing and technical expertise.
posted by Good Brain at 5:03 PM on November 14, 2006 [1 favorite]
It's probably worth looking at its early years. Early industry was primarily extractive (logging & fishing), but then came the Yukon gold rush and Seattle became a gateway to alaska. Fortunes were made supplying the prospectors headed to alaska. Few of them made any money, but those that did ended up spending a lot of it in Seattle. This gave Seattle commercial foundations, capital, and a population looking to make a fortune, and a workforce with business skills.
In later years Seattle scored the University of Washington, which brought expertise. World War II breathed new life into our aircraft industry, which attracted a skilled workforce of machinists and engineers. Boeing's hard times in the 70s put a lot of those people out of work, which created a cheap labor pool for new industries (and lowered housing prices). Some people think that the hangover from Boeing's hard times gave Microsoft fertile ground for hiring engineers in its early years. A powerful Senator helped secure major money for the Fred Hutchison Cancer Research center, which, in conjunction with the University, helped seed the local biotech industry.
Having established itself, Seattle has drawn the best and brightest from other parts of its region, and the rest of the country. It's beauty and natural amenities made it attractive to silicon valley refugees fleeing high Bay Area housing prices through the 90s.
Taken together, these factors create a virtuous cycle as captital and ambition combine with financial, marketing and technical expertise.
posted by Good Brain at 5:03 PM on November 14, 2006 [1 favorite]
Great insight... worthy of further exploration and perhaps future master thesis or doctorial work! Let's see, confirm the hypothesis first by calculating what "meteoric rise" is for a company, and determine per/capita(?) which states have that particular status. Now, if the hypothesis is true- and that my neck o' the woods is a hotbed of innovation, then we will take a look at the water supply. I've lived here my entire life and have yet to have an original thought. :)
posted by bytemover at 6:21 PM on November 14, 2006
posted by bytemover at 6:21 PM on November 14, 2006
It's interesting to note that Bill Gates tried to run Microsoft out of Albuquerque, but moved back to Seattle, where he's from, quickly. Some say he was just homesick, others say he couldn't find the kind of employees he wanted in New Mexico.
posted by GaelFC at 9:08 PM on November 14, 2006
posted by GaelFC at 9:08 PM on November 14, 2006
Now wait - maybe it is slightly confirmation bias-like and I can't speak to Seattle, but there is definitely something about Silicon Valley that makes it a hotbed of entrepreneurship. The number of startup companies in the Web 2.0 space seems to confirm this, no?
(I do like Good Brain's analysis too though).
posted by rmm at 10:38 PM on November 14, 2006
(I do like Good Brain's analysis too though).
posted by rmm at 10:38 PM on November 14, 2006
My analysis is basically my layman's understanding of the theory of business/technology clusters (and other related theories) combined to my layman's understanding of Seattle's history.
There is no doubt that Seattle is an innovation center, but it probably trails the area around Boston (at least historically), and certainly trails the bay area/silicon valley. LA & NYC have long been centers of media innovation. NYC has also been strong on finance & fashion.
People make careers out of studying this stuff.
posted by Good Brain at 11:34 PM on November 14, 2006
There is no doubt that Seattle is an innovation center, but it probably trails the area around Boston (at least historically), and certainly trails the bay area/silicon valley. LA & NYC have long been centers of media innovation. NYC has also been strong on finance & fashion.
People make careers out of studying this stuff.
posted by Good Brain at 11:34 PM on November 14, 2006
There is the Four Counties Theory to hang your idea on. Puget Sound and Silicon Valley basically generated all of the excess income of the 1990's boom. Sorry to have to expand your territory to cover Ecotopia but there it is.
posted by ptm at 12:10 AM on November 15, 2006
posted by ptm at 12:10 AM on November 15, 2006
I think you have confirmation bias. But, that's not to say there aren't specific areas in the United States (and elsewhere) that are better for these things. If you're interested in this as a general topic, you should read Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian.
Very specifically around your exact question, there is the following essay from Paul Graham:
How To Be Silicon Valley
Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?
It wouldn't be surprising if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, because you couldn't reproduce it in most of the US either. What does it take to make a silicon valley even here?
What it takes is the right people. If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley.
That's a striking departure from the past. Up till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities. All great cities were located on waterways, because cities made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship.
Now you could make a great city anywhere, if you could get the right people to move there. So the question of how to make a silicon valley becomes: who are the right people, and how do you get them to move?
Two Types
I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. They're the limiting reagents in the reaction that produces startups, because they're the only ones present when startups get started. Everyone else will move.
Observation bears this out: within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only if they have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it's full of rich people, it has few nerds. It's not the kind of place nerds like.
Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people. The top US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. MIT yielded Route 128. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. But Carnegie-Mellon? The record skips at that point. Lower down the list, the University of Washington yielded a high-tech community in Seattle, and the University of Texas at Austin yielded one in Austin. But what happened in Pittsburgh? And in Ithaca, home of Cornell, which is also high on the list?
I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to college at Cornell, so I can answer for both. The weather is terrible, particularly in winter, and there's no interesting old city to make up for it, as there is in Boston. Rich people don't want to live in Pittsburgh or Ithaca. So while there are plenty of hackers who could start startups, there's no one to invest in them.
[...]
This goes on for a bit longer. There are also a ton of other fantastic essays on his website that are worth reading.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:53 AM on November 15, 2006
Very specifically around your exact question, there is the following essay from Paul Graham:
How To Be Silicon Valley
Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something unique about it?
It wouldn't be surprising if it were hard to reproduce in other countries, because you couldn't reproduce it in most of the US either. What does it take to make a silicon valley even here?
What it takes is the right people. If you could get the right ten thousand people to move from Silicon Valley to Buffalo, Buffalo would become Silicon Valley.
That's a striking departure from the past. Up till a couple decades ago, geography was destiny for cities. All great cities were located on waterways, because cities made money by trade, and water was the only economical way to ship.
Now you could make a great city anywhere, if you could get the right people to move there. So the question of how to make a silicon valley becomes: who are the right people, and how do you get them to move?
Two Types
I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. They're the limiting reagents in the reaction that produces startups, because they're the only ones present when startups get started. Everyone else will move.
Observation bears this out: within the US, towns have become startup hubs if and only if they have both rich people and nerds. Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it's full of rich people, it has few nerds. It's not the kind of place nerds like.
Whereas Pittsburgh has the opposite problem: plenty of nerds, but no rich people. The top US Computer Science departments are said to be MIT, Stanford, Berkeley, and Carnegie-Mellon. MIT yielded Route 128. Stanford and Berkeley yielded Silicon Valley. But Carnegie-Mellon? The record skips at that point. Lower down the list, the University of Washington yielded a high-tech community in Seattle, and the University of Texas at Austin yielded one in Austin. But what happened in Pittsburgh? And in Ithaca, home of Cornell, which is also high on the list?
I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to college at Cornell, so I can answer for both. The weather is terrible, particularly in winter, and there's no interesting old city to make up for it, as there is in Boston. Rich people don't want to live in Pittsburgh or Ithaca. So while there are plenty of hackers who could start startups, there's no one to invest in them.
[...]
This goes on for a bit longer. There are also a ton of other fantastic essays on his website that are worth reading.
posted by NotMyselfRightNow at 5:53 AM on November 15, 2006
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by xil at 4:36 PM on November 14, 2006