Global Marketplace
The Bay Area and Innovation
Mark F. Bregman, Ph.D.
Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer
Neustar, Inc.
Recently I have been talking with lots of folks about why the Bay Area is such a center of innovation. It has been this way for more than 50 years. In 1939 Hewlett and Packard founded their innovation-based company that would grow to be the biggest information technology company in the world. In the 1960′s the Bay Area was the center of innovation in music, art and lifestyle and gave birth to Silicon Valley (a named coined by Daniel Hoefler in 1971). In the 1970′s the Venture industry was birthed here. The 1980′s led to the creation of entirely new industries in bio-tech and software. Today silicon is not produced in Silicon Valley and many new ventures are being launched in Bangalore or Shanghai yet the Bay Area remains a critical part of the global innovation economy. Why is this?
Many people point to the existence of leading academic institutions and research laboratories as the source of the region’s innovation. Others point to the rich abundance of venture capital; still others to the cultural diversity and acceptance of risk-taking and experimentation. While these are all important, I believe that the reason that the small area within about 50 miles of San Francisco remains so important in global innovation is that, like many important places in history – Constantinople, Rome, Paris, Hong Kong, etc. – the Bay Area has emerged as today’s most vital marketplace for ideas that drive innovation.
In today’s economy the most valuable commodity is information. The Bay Area provides a rich marketplace for the exchange of innovative ideas. Like any good marketplace, the ‘buyers’ come because this is where the ‘sellers’ are and the ‘sellers’ because this is where the ‘buyers’ gather. The innovation soup made with appropriate amounts of intellectual capital (Universities and National Labs), financial capital (Angel Investors and Venture Capitalists), and raw talent (the many engineers, scientists and others that are attracted to the region) is ‘just right’ and leads to a virtual cycle that attracts more of each ingredient.
My own personal experience since coming to the Bay Area eight years ago, is that the culture here is one of open sharing of ideas. There are many people in the information technology industry (in which I work) that come here regularly to connect with the latest ideas and to share their own. In fact I know of a number of startup businesses that were founded in the Bay Area despite the fact that their founders had to relocate here to create the companies and their development teams are offshore. The appeal of being part of the area’s innovation marketplace is that great!
The Bay Area’s power as a marketplace for ideas is what made us great 50 years ago – and will make us leaders for the next 50 years –in spite of the challenges of the fast-changing global competitive environment. Let’s talk about this through the virtual forum established on this page of the site. Let’s share ideas — ideas on the challenges and ideas leading to action. You can participate by discussing three areas: (1) your perspective on the more important global changes that have and are taking place that impact our innovation competitiveness; (2) your perspective on the role the Bay Area should strive to attain – where we do we want to plant our flag; and (3) your ideas on how we, working together as a region, could attain that role.