Although Silicon Valley only occupies 0.2% of the land area of the United States and has a total population of less than 5 million, it has created many miracles in the history of industry and science and technology. So what makes Silicon Valley today?
We can talk about it from two aspects.
First, from the birth time of Silicon Valley, we can see the huge difference between it and other industrialized regions in the United States and even the world. Silicon Valley rose in the late industrial age, specifically after World War II, so Silicon Valley skipped many processes of the industrial age from the very beginning, and was an industrial center established entirely in accordance with the characteristics of the information age. More importantly, after World War II, two events occurred in the tech industry that were decisive for Silicon Valley. The first thing is that in 1946 the United States invented the first electronic computer ENIAC, which announced the beginning of the information age. And the second thing was the birth of cybernetics, information theory, in 1948. So what is cybernetics? Take a look at the process of developing products in Internet companies today, and you will understand that this is actually a method evolved from cybernetics. A product must be launched first, get feedback from users on the product, and then continue to modify it before it can be perfected. This kind of product design thinking through feedback and continuous iteration is precisely the essence of cybernetics. What is information theory? Literally easy to understand, it is the theory of communication. In fact, information theory is essentially a method to solve the uncertainty in life. For example, manpower is getting more and more expensive nowadays, and we don't know where the upper limit of manpower cost is, but computers must be getting cheaper and cheaper, so handing more work to computers and artificial intelligence is the best choice . This is called Shannon's first law. Let's take a second example. Originally, the bandwidth at home was not enough, so we could only watch entertainment programs on TV. No matter how popular a program is, the national viewership rate at the same time period cannot exceed 5%. However, with the increase of Internet bandwidth, the dissemination ability of programs has been greatly improved, which has led to the rise of Internet celebrities such as Paipi Jiang, and the increase in the capacity of dissemination channels is the key factor. This is called Shannon's second law.
Well, after talking about the reasons for time, let's talk about the second success secret of Silicon Valley's success, culture.
First, there is tolerance for rebellion. Rebellion is the norm in Silicon Valley, not only because of Californians' tradition of taking risks and trying new things, but also closely related to the local legal system. For example, it is introduced in the book that in order to encourage the rebellious behavior of employees and promote the technological progress of the entire Silicon Valley area, the California government has shown the greatest tolerance for the phenomenon of former company employees switching jobs among the same industry, and even prohibits private companies between companies. They reached a gentleman's agreement not to poach each other. This greatly improves the mobility of Silicon Valley talent, while forcing large companies to encourage employees to start businesses within the company. The outside world often has a misunderstanding of Silicon Valley, that great companies are born from the garage culture, in fact, the real secret to successfully starting a great company in Silicon Valley is to breed new companies in the original company and the university.
The second characteristic of Silicon Valley culture is internationalization. In Silicon Valley, not only star companies like Facebook are striving to globalize, but even small companies that are not well-known will open up the international market for the first time. Many companies want to develop products for people all over the world from the beginning, so it is not uncommon in Silicon Valley to launch products in 20 languages in one go. As an obvious example, according to the 2012 census, 51% of households in the Silicon Valley area speak not English as their first language at home, but their native language prior to immigrating here. Therefore, many companies will find it difficult to compete with Silicon Valley companies, because you are not competing with companies in any country, but with the world.
Three hallmarks of Silicon Valley culture are the pursuit of excellence. The cost of office and living in the Silicon Valley area of the United States is far higher than the US average. And housing prices are even lower than in New York. This has formed a market elimination mechanism. Only those few companies with high enough profits and fast growth can occupy the core position and obtain more market resources.
The above are the unique characteristics of Silicon Valley and the real reason behind the success of Silicon Valley.
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