
The Secret History of Silicon Valley Part V: Happy 100th Birthday Silicon Valley - terpua
http://steveblank.com/2009/04/20/the-secret-history-of-silicon-valley-part-v-happy-100th-birthday-silicon-valley/
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mrduncan
Here is a link to the Google Tech Talk by Steve Blank:
[http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&oi=video_r...](http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&oi=video_result&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DhFSPHfZQpIQ&ei=Yr7sScrqNIrCM9zmoNkF&usg=AFQjCNF3xS5pQ0n2x_j4a_FVgyfupHDE0g)

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skmurphy
In the slides from that talk he actually anchored the start of Silicon Valley
with Hewlett Packard. I blogged last year that Federal Radio was a much better
starting point, See [http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/11/05/steve-blank-on-
secre...](http://www.skmurphy.com/blog/2008/11/05/steve-blank-on-secret-
history-of-silicon-valley-at-chm-nov-20/) based on Timothy J. Sturgeon’s "How
Silicon Valley Came to Be" where he notes:

The fact that the San Francisco Bay Area’s electronics industry began close to
the turn of the Twentieth Century should lay to rest the notion that
industrialization and urbanization on the scale of Silicon Valley can be
quickly induced in other areas. Silicon Valley is nearly 100 years old. It
grew out of a historically and geographically specific context that cannot be
recreated. The lesson for planners and economic developers is to focus on
long-term, not short-term developmental trajectories. Silicon Valley was the
fastest growing region in the United States during the late 1970s and early
1980s; but that growth came out of a place, not a technology. Silicon Valley’s
development is intimately entwined with the long history of industrialization
and innovation in the larger San Francisco Bay Area.

See <http://web.mit.edu/ipc/publications/pdf/00-014.pdf>

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sblank
Thanks for the link to the MIT paper. Wish I had seen it _before_ I wrote the
blog post! I would have been much more coherent.

steve

