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Showing posts from February, 2015

What Do Silicon Valley and Evolution Have In Common?

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Silicon Valley, the southern region of the San Francisco Bay Area, is a darling of the world. It is mysterious. It is sexy. It is rich. Every other city around the world wants to be like Silicon Valley. Everyday there is a delegation of government officials or entrepreneurs visiting Silicon Valley to understand how it works. The French president was here last year. The Swedish royals will be here next week. Most big European and Asian technology companies have outposts in Silicon Valley just so that someone can organize meetings for their executives with Stanford, Google , and Facebook . There are people who have made careers out of "innovation tourism" and telling people how to create a startup and how Silicon Valley works. Despite many popular theories like Silicon Valley is an accident or all you need is a “lean startup” (that is, don’t spend too much money before you understand customer needs), the best way to understand how Silicon Valley works is by underst