
Renaissance Florence Was a Better Model for Innovation Than Silicon Valley Is - adamnemecek
https://hbr.org/2016/01/renaissance-florence-was-a-better-model-for-innovation-than-silicon-valley-is
======
nickpsecurity
It's an interesting article. There's certainly a lot of untapped talent out
there doing relatively menial work when they've shown capability to do very
different and more effective things. Sponsoring such people or just being more
likely to hire them could bring benefits. Well, it's already been proven by
the companies doing it while reaping those benefits. Plus the occasional
academic team asking for funding on something that might be a game-changer and
is to some degree. So, we need more of it.

That said, the author is wrong about the title and doesn't get Silicon Valley.
Most don't because they don't know the historical context of how it became
what it is. If you want to re-create or beat it, you have to either imitate or
improve on the components that went into creating it. This is the best article
I've seen summarizing the big picture of how Silicon Valley came to be:

[https://medium.com/backchannel/why-silicon-valley-will-
conti...](https://medium.com/backchannel/why-silicon-valley-will-continue-to-
rule-c0cbb441e22f)

Note: I bet many people didn't think Zuckerberg and others paid visits to the
old guard to learn old lessons for IT. Probably thought it was all modern,
fresh thinking "disrupting" the old stuff. A mix as usual. ;)

~~~
ThomPete
I think there is some selection bias going on here.

I am not sure about Jobs but it seems like Zuckerberg had already founded
Facebook before he met with the old timer. So he was already onto something.

On another note I must say that although the phrase _" to invent the future
you must understand the past"_ (another popular phrase is; _" Those who don't
understand history are doomed to repeat it"_) I don't believe it's true. In
fact Silicon Valley is the perfect example of why this is not the case.

At least from all the things I have bean reading up on, with regards to the
history of Silicon Valley it started because of some demands for computing
power and was cemented with the semiconductor which then ended up creating the
real reason why Silicon Valley kept attracting talent. (you could probably go
even further back and claim that the "Manhattan Project" was as important for
SV too.

So the "real" reason SV was popular was because a lot of factors went into
place none of them by design.

In other words. You can't design a silicon valley because it wasn't designed
to begin with. It evolved from a number of factors and "after the fact
realizations" which are not possible to copy.

And so whatever becomes the new SV will not be designed either, it will evolve
when the right circumstances allow for it.

~~~
eloisant
Yes, actually Facebook started to grow with east-coast VCs, already had some
success before they got Silicon Valley investors to go to the next step
(because east coast VCs weren't used to the SV amount of money). And
obviously, moving to SV was a condition.

~~~
nickpsecurity
That fits in with my theme a bit. These people presumably had the business
experience Zuckerberg lacked. They get it started. Then, SV grows it huge.
Then, most people forget about east coast VC's and it's merely a "Silicon
Valley success story."

Revisionist history. Gotta love it. :)

------
mpdehaan2
First off: screw Silicon Valley. Using this as a label for the whole tech
scene really has to stop.

Second off: I really like the patronage idea. It feels horribly unfair if you
are _NOT_ included, which is why it can't last in many places, but back around
2006 or so I joined Red Hat and we had the "Emerging Technologies Group" (now
defunct).

Basically, our group was told to go make systems management applications that
made people's life easier. No plan on commercailing, and we barely conferred
with each other but every 6 months or so. It was pretty amazing.

Cobbler and Func came out of that, and eventually I was able to get more
involved with OSS than most people do, and that led to a lot of other things
later on down the line (like Ansible).

I think it's a really cool idea to just find some smart people, vaguely wave
at a problem, say, "go make these users really happy" with very few parameters
and see what happens.

I also believe in companies with a really strong vision of what they want to
build, but what we miss is that some of our best designers are also the
builders, and when we get one person designing and hundreds of people
building, we can possibly get bloat and a bunch of untapped creative
potential.

The theory of the 80/20 time, that I hear seems to be a myth, is a step in the
right direction.

------
jondubois
I disagree with the article. Basically what it's implying is that we should
stop giving small amounts of funding to many talented people and, instead,
give large amounts of funding to few geniuses.

The problem with this is that you can't know who is a genius before you
invest. Was Steve Jobs obviously a "Genius" before he started Apple? No. Even
after running Apple for a few years, he was fired because some important
people saw him as incompetent (I.e. Not a genius). It took many years before
he was able to prove himself.

If investors started spending more on fewer people, it would mean that fewer
"geniuses" would be discovered.

If anything, I think Silicon Valley is too much like Florence; VCs are pouring
billions into unicorns headed by so called "geniuses" while depraving unknown
geniuses the ability to prove themselves on the market.

Also, I think during he renaissance, very smart/talented people would have
stood out from the crowd. If you go to SV, smart people are everywhere, it's
even harder to identify genius in such an environment.

~~~
jessriedel
If you can't identify the geniuses but you think that they (whoever they are)
need lots of free time to succeed, you can just select people randomly.

~~~
jondubois
Yes, I think it would work better that way. Just think of Uber; they raised $8
billion.

With that kind of money, we could have funded 100K small startups for 1 year
($80K each). That's a lot of startups!

I think funding fewer companies with more money is a good short-term strategy
(in terms of buying competitive advantage) but not good in the long-run.

I don't think Uber will be able to maintain a monopoly once the hype dies
down. Once the hype has faded, competitors will come up and eat into Uber's
business - For example, Google, Tesla and Apple might all have their own
dedicated networks of self-driving cars to drive people around and Uber may
become redundant.

Uber's valuation would deflate and most of those $8 billion would have been
wasted.

~~~
marincounty
I wonder everyday why they don't have more competition. I won't be back, and
don't need a long lecture, but it just seems like a service begging for
competition?

I think they are missing a large demographic. There are people like myself,
who don't care about style, or the newness of a vechicle. I just want to get
there, at a reasonable price. Yes, safety is important, but older cars are
safe if maintained. Hell, drive me anywhere in a old collector's car--with
tons of metal?

Rent a Wreck was a popular business in the stone ages. People just needed
cheap transportation. I honestly don't care about what a car looks like. I'm
not marrying it.

~~~
ghaff
I suspect with UberX you've already reached the point where you're not going
to cut costs much by going any further downscale. There are things to
criticize about Uber but "their prices are high because the cars are too nice"
probably isn't one of them.

Rent a Wreck is still around and I know people who use them on a regular
basis.

------
bcheung
The apprenticeship system is something I have long advocated and think it is a
much better system than today's college system. Your experience is actually in
the field instead of being more academic. Why pay huge amounts of money and go
into student loan debt? It would be much better for the apprentice to have
free education and for the company to have free labor. It's a win/win.

~~~
walshemj
Who pays for the education in the UK there used to be training taxes to pay
for technical training cant see sv or the USA going for that

~~~
bcheung
Under the apprenticeship model an apprentice agrees to work under a
master/company for free (and then maybe for low wage as he becomes more
skilled). Traditionally, it was a 7 year contract. Taxes are not necessary
under that model. The education is provided in exchange for work. Work that
gives you experience and helps you build mastery in the field.

~~~
guai888
Apprenticeship model can produce very good result. It is a one-to-one
instruction and instructor has real world experience to pass on with all the
technical knowledge. The advantage of this type of education can be
illustrated by the Bloom's 2 sigma problem:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloom%27s_2_Sigma_Problem)

------
BashiBazouk
For the innovation to hit critical mass, do we have to survive a black plague,
or will any large devastating event do?

Kidding aside, I wonder how hard it was to break in to the innovative trades
without a politically connected benefactor (or be born in to it). This far out
historically, we mainly hear the success stories and rarely the failures to
which I expect were many and tragic.

~~~
entee
There are periodic "devastating" events in the valley, maybe not quite as bad
but there is a boom-bust cycle in the valley does something similar.

The selection bias for positive outcomes is pervasive. There were many, many
apprentices working for guys like Verocchio, and pretty much the only one we
know of is Da Vinci.

That said, just because you only hear of the analogies to Jobs/Woz, Ellison,
Page/Brin, Gates, Zuckerberg, doesn't mean there weren't plenty of quite
successful individuals. Likely, their work was lost as it wasn't of enough
lasting value to survive the political and socioeconomic upheaval of a half-
millenium, but I want to believe some merely-very-good people did well. Sadly
there's no real way to tell...

------
ThomPete
Hmmm

I am not so sure this is a fair comparison. One thing I think it lacks is
patronage competitors (and thus competition).

The article seemed to indicate (unwillingly) that it was a unique combination
of non-reproducible scenarios i.e. talent and talent scout. It's not like
there weren't other places with other talent and patrons.

Also SV teaches us the exact opposite since it didn't start with a city with
lots of money and lots of patrons (they came over time)

I think a much more likely explanation is the same that spur many other sudden
sparks excellence within a short time and geographic location and that is.
Some sort of right combination of progress in a number of fields, the
availability of money and a fairly progressive time in history in that area.

I.e. luck more than anything else. (Just like nation building btw)

~~~
rezistik
Aren't Angels, Seed focused VCs and incubators essentially patrons? In many
ways the modern patron of the arts is the Angel investor funding technological
arts that may never become viable businesses.

~~~
nickpsecurity
They take what they fund. Also, when patents are involved, the big company
that ends up acquiring it often uses it to _discourage_ innovation outside
their company. So, quite different from a patron model in practice due to
incentives.

Now, this doesn't stop a company or VC from acting like a patron. We've seen a
number of them release open-source software, publish papers on working
strategy/tech, sponsor R&D that is similarly public, and so on. I'm not sure
what the percentage is but it shows the models aren't exclusive. It's just the
incentives shift VC stuff far in another direction from Da Vinci or
Michelangos making goods for the public. Really far per some billionaires. ;)

~~~
rezistik
That's a really optimistic view of a patron, patrons purchased or owned much
of the work they helped create. That was the point of being a patron.

~~~
nickpsecurity
I havent really studied the concept much. People talk like it was charity or
something. Thanks for correction.

~~~
rezistik
It varied from patron to patron similar to how it varies VC to VC. Some would
directly commission work, others would work to establish connections with
people who would commission work, and to some it was similar to being on
retainer.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Gotcha.

------
notacoward
I don't know if I agree with the author's thesis (haven't thought enough about
it yet) but the comparison seems fascinating regardless. The very first thing
that occurred to me was that, while patronage is a central feature of both
systems, in Florence it was out in the open while in Silicon Valley it's
obfuscated behind a layer of arbitrageurs. Not really sure why anyone would
consider that an improvement, either in terms of being less transparent or of
having yet another party between the creators and the profit from their work.

~~~
jsprogrammer
Presumably arbitrageurs would consider any increased arbitrage opportunities
as an improvement. Everyone else would probably see it as theft (though an
arbitrageur would probably spin it as increasing everyone's wealth).

------
restalis
"The city’s Renaissance blossomed only a few decades after the Black Death
decimated the city, and in part because of it. Horrible as it was, the plague
shook up the rigid social order, and that new fluidity led directly to
artistic and intellectual revolution."

This may be only a small part of the reason. One of the Renaissance's most
important cause was the fall of the Eastern Roman Empire. The extraordinary
people flee to established centers, and at the time of its decline Byzantium
enjoyed a great cultural blossom. Constantinople was a oasis of art and
culture throughout the dark age, and only after Constantinople's fall under
Ottoman Empire the European art and culture had no more that established place
to coalesce to and thus was forced to blossom somewhere else. In the same way
today's copycat entrepreneurial centers can not truly blossom until SF looses
its name and appeal.

------
ChicagoDave
There's no doubt that people of means need to invest more in general, not
specifically in talented individuals. There are trillions of dollars being
horded and even a fraction of that could enable an extraordinary increase in
invention and discovery.

------
Apocryphon
I've actually wondered if ancient patronage systems would be better than
Hollywood and other entertainment industries, that give power to studios and
highly-profitable producers.

~~~
nickpsecurity
Need a hybrid for several reasons: marketing/sales; logistics; lobbying
Washington against what undermines legal protections. The non-greedy things
entertainment industry does that benefits industry and artists. I'm not sure
what that model would look like as I don't know the industry well enough.

------
ilvnvtoomuch
This article reminds me how many time Europe has had to rebuild or reconstruct
in the recent 500+ years. Rebuilding forces societies to start from scratch
and think of new methods/alternatives.

Does anyone know if South Asian cities have had similar forced rebuilding
efforts? I don't think they have. Natural disasters have not level-ed a city.
War/Invasions have lead to attackers being assimilated.

------
graycat
What got Silicon Valley going is clear -- aerospace for US national security
and NASA. That was it.

IMHO, the article:

(1) Neglects how much of what caused and/or enabled Silicon Valley really
happened and still happens outside of Silicon Valley, e.g. Bell Labs in NJ,
IBM near Poughkeepsie, NY, and in Boca Raton, Florida, Microsoft in Redmond,
WA, US DoD, NASA, and DARPA in DC, CERN in Switzerland, and Linux wherever.

(2) Overestimates the role of Ph.D. holders in nearly all of the financial
successes of the companies in Silicon Valley based heavily on software.

(3) Greatly underestimates the importance for economic productivity of the
main uses of the work of Silicon Valley, (A) _document preparation_ that got
rid of typewriters, paper spreadsheets, and graph paper and (B) digital
communications.

(4) For the last 20 years or so of Silicon Valley, overestimates the role of
originality as illustrated in Renaissance Florence, Italy.

How Silicon Valley Did Get Started:

US aerospace needed a rapidly flowing ocean of electronics that desperately
needed digital signal processing from transistors, integrated circuits, and
microprocessors instead of analog signal processing from vacuum tubes.

So, aerospace was constantly just screaming for many multiples of more,
smaller, faster, lower power transistors. Make a little progress in that
direction, and US aerospace would buy, cost no object. So, desperate
customers, deep pockets, wanting, in one word, more, and cost no object.

Before WWII, Bell knew very well that they needed an electronic amplifier
better than vacuum tubes and started the research on a solid state amplifier.
WWII delayed the work, but just after the war we had transistors -- Bell gave
it to the world.

Soon the needs of US aerospace from the Korean War, the Viet Nam War, the Cold
War, and the space race and the huge flows of US Federal money got us Silicon
Valley and microprocessors. The key background was solid state physics.

Then, with microprocessors, could attack that huge time waste in the offices
-- word processing or _document preparation_. The waste was enormous. So, a
PC, some word processing software, and a printer would totally blow away any
and all typewriters and did. Presto, bingo, we got the IBM PC, Intel,
Microsoft, Apple, Lotus, Adobe, Seagate, Western Digital, Gateway, Dell, etc.
Right -- document preparation.

Then, dialing phone numbers, with some phone modems, already available for
selected high end needs, got us bulletin board software, AOL, and a start on
social media.

Then put the TCP/IP stack from BSD into Windows, and, again, presto, bingo,
got the explosion of the commercial Internet to replace dial up connections.

Then Tim Berners-Lee, at CERN wanted a word processing mark-up language to
ease writing newsletters for the particle physics community to be distributed
over the Internet, then common at research institutions, and we got HTTP and
HTML.

To read the HTTP and HTML, we got Web browsers. We're talking just a simple
word processing markup language of which by then there maybe a dozen popular
ones and many dozens more. So, we got Web browsers for Windows, etc.

Then soon nearly every organization in the world wanted a Web site if only as
an electronic replacement for a paper brochure.

Then there got to be a lot of Web sites and a need to let people find what
they would like -- we got Yahoo and, then, Google. We needed IP routers, and
Cisco got rich.

People wanted to interact with others, and we got social media and Facebook.

Meanwhile, we made great progress in the infrastructure. Especially, Bell Labs
to the rescue again -- GaAlAs heterojunction solid state lasers and optical
fibers for the data rates needed by the Internet backbone.

We needed, and slowly got, much more and better infrastructure -- data
communications, data storage, processors, main memories, BIOS features,
virtual machine software, operating systems, programming languages, disk file
systems, and database software, and security borrowing heavily from the
history on mainframes, lots of hardware communications standards, and, then,
the great miniaturization of mobile devices.

Then we got a lot more in on-line shopping, information, news, video, etc.

So, Bell Labs gave us transistors; US aerospace gave us microprocessors; the
mainframe history gave us infrastructure software; DARPA gave us the Internet;
Bell Labs gave us the optical fibers to carry the Internet data; and here we
are.

We might pour a little cold water on the hype about Silicon Valley with two
points:

(1) As from Kauffman in

[http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional-
limit...](http://www.kauffman.org/newsroom/2012/07/institutional-limited-
partners-must-accept-blame-for-poor-longterm-returns-from-venture-capital-
says-new-kauffman-report)

and from AVC in

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-
returns.html...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2013/02/venture-capital-
returns.html#disqus_thread)

on average, the VC returns have been poor.

(2) We get another Microsoft, Cisco, Apple, Google, or Facebook only a few
times each 10 years.

Okay, but, now what?

Maybe next year the world will say, "Silicon Valley, what have you done for me
lately?".

