262ventures.com

But I had to link to this link from Eric Ries’ blog.  His topic of choice is a summary of books, presentations, and thoughts about why Silicon Valley developed into the tech behemoth of the late 20th and early 21st century, as opposed to Route 128 in Boston.

This is a personal favorite debate of mine, having seen the culture of entrepreneurship at MIT and at Stanford.  The difference is subtle but palpable.  While the students and faculty at both institutions (as well as the other universities at play locally: Harvard, Berkeley, Northeastern, Santa Clara) demonstrate immense intuition for entrepreneurship, the mechanisms for launching startups is different.  In an overgeneralizing, but demonstrative example, MIT entrepreneurship is represented by the 100k competition, a formal route towards bringing enterprising communities together and launching companies, whereas at Stanford students put stuff together in their dorms and meet with random mentors in the Menlo Park, Mountain View community to engender new companies.  The difference is culturally systemic and there is no doubt that both paths have led to extreme success.

I’m going to look forward to reading the referenced book (Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian.)

Tags: Eric Ries, MIT, Route 128, Silicon Valley, Stanford

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