The Riddle of the Valley

Abstract

Since the Second World War, the San Francisco Peninsula has demonstrated a capacity to produce path-breaking new technologies. Recognized globally as Silicon Valley, the region's prowess appears to be growing. At the end of the 1990s, it was the heralded centre of the dot.com boom. And after that bubble burst, the auspicious debut of Google established it as the standard-setter for Internet search engines. This remarkable record, and the wealth that it has spawned, has attracted legions of interpreters. In a nation and a world obsessed with technology-based economic development, everyone wants to know Silicon Valley's secret of success. But understanding the Valley is less a secret than a riddle: the relevant factors contributing to its performance are evident to any keen observer, but how do they fit together? What makes them work? And, for would-be imitators, how might they be replicated? This volume by Christophe Lecuyer provides a new and authoritative account of how the pieces came together to create Silicon Valley in the first place. Lecuyer contrasts his approach with those taken by Stuart Leslie, who accorded a crucial role to Stanford University and particularly military patronage, and by Anna Lee Saxenian, who emphasized how a productive regional network emerged from the decentralized, competitive structure of industry.1 While supporting aspects of these analyses, Lecuyer endorses the perspective of Alfred Marshall, whose writings on the formation of industrial districts accorded 'a central place to technological skills and manufacturing practices' (p. 4).