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.)

My beloved alma mater, with its college hoops programs ranked #7 (women’s) and #9 (men’s), decided to increase their endowment disbursement to increase the amount of financial aid to middle class families of undergraduate students. While I would argue that even more should be done to make education and access to private universities even more affordable (as they sit upon huge piles of endowment green), I think it is awesome that Stanford is leading the way.

Umair Haque writes that many political, economic, and social systems are in place to provide a direct transfer of wealth from those with less to those with more . Stanford sits on over 15 billion , owns thousands of acres of sprawling Bay Area landscape and real estate, engenders lasting and successful symbiotic relationships with local companies, and has a vibrant and productive research community. Stanford is the archetype of ‘have more.’ However by recognizing that the direct deployment of financial resources towards enhancing educational access to a more economically diverse population, the University has taken a step to reverse the sign in the wealth-flow equation and close the wealth gap. While this may seem altruistic to some, I think there is a clear economic benefit for the school: Stanford is investing in assets that have the best risk-adjusted rate of return… its people!

Only time will tell, but I’ll venture a guess that Stanford will benefit significantly more than the the near term loss in its endowment from continuing along such directions. I hope that other universities will follow suit.