Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Innovation Geography: The Beginning of the End for Silicon Valley

At Pacific Standard magazine, innovation is increasingly flat (not spiky).

Theme: Economic convergence.

Subject Article: "L.A. tech economy is underrated, venture capitalist Peter Thiel says."

Other Links: 1. "Bay Area growth crisis: 114,000 new jobs created and 7,000 new housing units."
2. "Big tech start-ups bypass Silicon Valley."

Postscript: Whatever you want to call the economic era after manufacturing (if you think there is a successor to manufacturing), I see evidence of convergence. Economic convergence is decline. In less normative terms, convergent economic activity diffuses geographically. Economic activity that used to concentrate in Silicon Valley now happens elsewhere. The world goes from, in Richard Florida parlance, spiky to flat. However, the world still looks spiky, but less so. I'm not interested in the false dichotomy (spiky vs. flat). I'm interested in the trend (spikier vs. flatter or divergent vs. convergent).

2 comments:

Steve said...

Won't this just lead to the gentrification of Oakland, a process that arguably has already started instead of startups bypassing Silicon Valley?

Jim Russell said...

As just about anyone in Oakland could tell you, it already has.