Silicon Valley Companies Research Articles

Digital Sovereignty, the Private Sector, and a Social Republican Alternative

The European Union has stated the ambition to regain control over the digital sphere, which academics have construed as both a push for digital sovereignty and as a form of digital constitutionalism. The strategy promises to be an improvement over the previous period of digital liberalism. I suggest, however, from a republican perspective, that this strategy of digital sovereignty is not sufficiently critical of the reliance on the private sector. A dominant private sector comes with a risk of widespread infrastructural dependency and yields too much of the digital sphere to a way of thinking that is shaped in accordance with silicon valley companies. On a republican account, these are arguably forms of structural domination. To prevent these risks from materialising, the European strategy should instead emphasize the role of alternative ownership models, such as those found in the digital commons and in public service media organisations.

Beyond sovereignty as authority: the multiplicity of European approaches to digital sovereignty

Digital Sovereignty is core to many contemporary debates on the regulation of digital technology, securing supply chains and strengthening the digital economy. In this paper, we focus on the European debates and policies around this project. We argue that the notion of digital sovereignty should be understood more as an overarching economic, societal and geopolitical project, rather than a project aimed at achieving any kind of political sovereignty or autarky in the digital sector. We arrive at this conclusion by analysing European policy documents and commentaries from various stakeholders for two cases: platform governance and semiconductors. The case of platform governance shows how the EU and its member states struggle to extend their regulatory power over the ‘data monopolies’ of the major Silicon Valley companies. The other is semiconductors, where the EU has kick-started several projects to improve the competitiveness of European manufacturers in a highly integrated global market. These examples demonstrate two things: a) that the pursuit of digital sovereignty does have some impact on the Internet (platform regulation) but also extends to other technological fields beyond it (semiconductors) and b) that digital sovereignty is not only a regulatory or technological project but also an economic, societal and geopolitical one.

The Legal and Institutional Foundations of Silicon Valley’s Technological Innovation: An Interdisciplinary Literature Review

This article reviews interdisciplinary literature to explain how state legislation and the practice of law in California influenced the success of Silicon Valley in creating a startup business culture involving the commercialization of technologies built on venture capital finance. Scholarship has identified four major factors in the rise of Silicon Valley: business culture, symbiotic institutional relations with research universities, California contract and employment law, and Silicon Valley law firm culture. Both law and institutional support have been central to the commercialization of scientific knowledge that is the hallmark of Silicon Valley. Silicon Valley companies have remained leaders in technological innovation for over sixty years, encompassing various technologies from semiconductors to personal computers to the Internet. This entrepreneurial approach to technology continues to this day as exemplified by the successful DoorDash and Airbnb IPOs launched in 2020. The paradigmatic Silicon Valley technology company consists of a small group of entrepreneurs building a start-up technology company funded by a venture capital fund. The venture capitalists (VC) maintain hands-on management of the company and receive seats on the board of director and preferred stock rights. If the business plan is successful, the company offers shares to the public through an initial public offering (IPO), or arranges additional funding from another VC fund. This Silicon Valley model is characterized by a tolerance for failure and high labor mobility. Technology company employees have the freedom to leave established companies to start their own ventures.

In Case You Haven't Heard…

Facebook said it has paused development of an Instagram Kids service that would be tailored for children 13 years old or younger, as the social network increasingly faces questions about the app's effect on young people's mental health, The New York Times reported Sept. 27. The pullback preceded a congressional hearing this week about internal research conducted by Facebook, and reported in The Wall Street Journal, that showed the company knew of the harmful mental health effects Instagram was having on teenage girls. The revelations have set off a public relations crisis for the Silicon Valley company and led to a fresh round of calls for new regulation. Facebook said it still wanted to build an Instagram product intended for children that would have a more “age appropriate experience” but was postponing the plans in the face of criticism.

Physics-related companies report mostly mild economic symptoms from COVID-19

Most makers of research tools for physical scientists report stable business. Some of their products are being used in the fight against the novel coronavirus.

From Local Academic Spin-Off to International Firm: The Case of VisLab

Universities play an important role in developing and transferring technology. In Italy, much innovation takes place where universities are located outside large towns, as in the case of VisLab. 
 
 VisLab, the Vision and Intelligent Systems Laboratory, founded by Prof. Alberto Broggi of Parma University, is a pioneer in perception systems and autonomous vehicle research. It is also the spin-off of the University of Parma acquired by Silicon Valley company Ambarella Inc., in July 2015 for $30 million. After the deal, VisLab remained in Italy and all the staff, about thirty researchers, were hired by VisLab for the Parma location. 
 
 This paper examines the university-industry interaction and, in particular, academic spin-off, as a source of economic growth, pointing out the importance of the context. The study describes the main characteristics of the VisLab case, including the possible alternative strategies, the structure of the final M&A deal and the advantages deriving from Parma and surrounding area.
 
 Despite, or perhaps because of its originality, the VisLab case seems to confirm the rule. It suggests that universities can play a key role in technology transfer: universities provide knowledge and trained personnel to firms, facilitating interaction between research and industry. Thus, policy makers should promote the commercialisation of research outcomes.

The overlooked governance issues raised by facial recognition

From the start of the 21st century to 2020, we have seen a growing market penetration of connected smartphones capable of photo, video and voice recordings. Silicon Valley companies such as Facebook and YouTube, as well as Chinese internet firms such as AliPay and TikTok, have enjoyed record valuations: these technology platforms have become the primary avenues for communications and cultural development around the world.

Post Corona Film and Television: Stream It, Skip It, or Revolutionize It?

Post Corona Film and Television:Stream It, Skip It, or Revolutionize It? Dennis Broe (bio) Before quarantine, when a phrase like "shelter in place" seemed like something out of the apocalyptic future forecast in The Walking Dead (AMC, US, 2010–), the main issue in film and television was how the industry would manage the transition from an actual to a virtual world. That question has now been heightened by the confinement to the point where the new question is, "Will film theaters and the network television industry survive a now accelerated transition?" The studio conglomerates and the major television networks were being challenged by the already existing streaming services and their response was a wave of consolidation that merged studios (Disney–Fox), paired communication distributors with product (AT&T–Time Warner), and cable networks with satellite production companies, TV networks, and film studios (Comcast–Sky–NBC–Universal). The result of this consolidation and increasing monopolization is a group of behemoth streaming services—Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, Peacock (Comcast NBCUniversal), Apple+, and HBO Max (AT&T–Time Warner)—that are set to challenge first US domestic and then global production, and particularly government-supported film financing and television channels across the globe. Already before the Coronavirus Crisis, Netflix and Amazon Prime's silent war was being waged worldwide against state-sponsored television. This can be seen most dramatically in France. Here, the pay-per-view service Canal+, similar in its place in the French mediasphere to HBO in the US, must reinvest [End Page 202] after they open in the theaters rather than the state mandated three years. These funds, as did British government funds for the public BBC Channel 4, frequently finance some of the most progressive and socially conscious film and television not only in France and Britain but around the world. With the American streaming service onslaught, Canal+ revenues are down (they rebounded somewhat in 2019 through a global outreach, but revenues still decreased from the height of 2015 by approximately 25 million euros.)1 Thus the 12.5 percent the company is required to contribute to financing local and global film and television declines proportionately. This change constitutes a net loss for progressive and socially involved film and television programming not only in France but also globally. The nature of work and viewing are now both moving rapidly online, hastened by the crisis, and with corresponding benefits for studios and producers. With this move, the streaming services are now full-fledged participants in the digital economy, sometimes referred to as the surveillance economy, which means they not only profit from attracting audiences but also from monetizing data from their "users" or viewers. The rapidly globalizing nature of these services opens up the potential for a worldwide homogenization of content as local networks and cultures succumb to the vast amounts of money available from this globalized revenue. Is there an alternative to this juggernaut? Potential challenges include those stemming from independent media, from government fightback through financing and taxation, and from the possibility of exploiting twin contradictions in the Netflix model involving the gesture toward "artistic freedom" and the way artists are paid. The Tech Companies: Corona Crisis Winners While Main Street—small businesses and their workforce—is floundering, the stock market, flush with government giveaways that it simply reinvests in itself, and the tech companies. whose success bolsters the market and which now include the streaming services, has thrived, to the point where Silicon Valley companies have now become "the grand winners of the confinement." Thus, at least from the European perspective, Amazon and Alibaba dominate delivery, Windows is on 95 percent of computers, Google is "the unique motor of western research," and Facebook quickly buys up and incorporates any apps that challenge its dominion in the area of social media.2 These giants "short circuit the states" as during the crisis Google and Apple blackmailed Germany into using them to track Coronavirus contacts, rather than developing a state database, by threatening to deactivate mobiles and iPhones.3 [End Page 203] These companies that in France go by the acronym GAFAM (Google, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, and Microsoft) have, partly as a result of the crisis, attained a net...

Bedouins of Silicon Valley: A neo-Khaldunian approach to sociology of technology

The standard narrative of the emergence, rise and decline of Silicon Valley companies focuses on the evolution of institutions and technological waves, not the mentality of the innovators and entrepreneurs. This article argues that this type of explanation of the rise and decline of the Silicon Valley firms and institutions can hardly be sufficient. The suggestion is that a neo-Khaldunian theory could shed light on the issue. This article is an attempt to, first, distinguish between the medieval and modern aspects of Ibn Khaldun’s theory and second, to use the latter to examine Silicon Valley as a social phenomenon. It will be argued that Ibn Khaldun’s theory is of most contemporary relevance when we read it as a general account of a cyclical replacement of the untrained with the trained, while over and above the specific, environmentally deterministic cycle he identifies between ‘city-dwellers’ and ‘Bedouins’. In the case of Silicon Valley, these could be read as metaphors for, respectively, the established tech firms versus the garage-based start-up ‘geeks’.

大学連携共同教育推進GPでの電気系修士学生のシリコンバレー研修

Fukuoka Institute of Technology has joined an engineering education consortium organized under a grant from the Japanese Ministry of Education, Science and Technology to encourage the talent of electrical engineering students. The grant called “Good Practice:GP” has been given to the consortium composed of five universities, Kyushu University, Kyushu Institute of Technology, Kumamoto University, Fukuoka University and Fukuoka Institute of Technology, for five years, 2012-2016. Silicon Valley visit training for electrical engineering master course students was planned as a project program of the GP. The program was proposed by Fukuoka Institute of Technology. The purpose of this program is to study the corporate culture of Silicon Valley companies including a venture business and a global PBL of the Stanford University Center for Design Research (CDR) in the San Francisco Bay Area, California. The visit training was carried out at the Plug & Play Tech Center located in Sunnyvale, the SYNNEX Corporation in Fremont and the CDR of Stanford University. This report shows the significance of the proposed program and students’ impression on visit training at Silicon Valley together with their activities at training classes.

Where Are You? Location Tracking and the Promise of Child Safety

Life360 is a surveillance app marketed to families that tracks and shares users’ location information in the name of child safety. Using this app as a case study, I examine how one Silicon Valley company promotes the idea that digital data are inherently objective and meaningful, specifically in the way they frame location information as necessary and sufficient for protecting children from harm. Apps like Life360 sell users a service that collects, repackages, and commodifies their personal information. These functions help fulfill the promise that Silicon Valley innovations developed for consumers can help solve social problems—in this case, that an app can help make children safer in public spaces. By closely analyzing the app itself and the texts produced by the company, this article finds that such technological solutions to risk both create and relieve a new anxiety about the need to know exactly where one’s family members are at all times.

SEGMENTATION AND MARKET STRATEGY: QUALITATIVE INSIGHTS FROM B2B TECHNOLOGY EXECUTIVES

The purpose of this paper was to critically examine the use and success of target marketing practices from the perspective of marketing managers in established B2B technology companies. Fourteen marketing executives with major segmentation responsibilities from five leading Silicon Valley companies participated in this research project via in-depth, small group interviews. Particular attention was paid toward choosing target markets by examining established theoretical frameworks and strategic typologies developed by the leading B2B segmentation scholars. Segmentation dimensions include customer-driven and organizational integration resulting in a 2 X 2 matrix of four segmentation archetypes. While strategic segmentation is the ideal -- a company rates highly on both dimensions -- other structures were found: sales-based, structural, and bolt-on, too. Multiple business segmentation bases are desirable to provide a complete view of potential target markets – this was clearly evident in the sample. The main segmentation priorities were building infrastructure with a planning emphasis on the “now”. To a lesser extent, segmentation strategies considered the “how”. None of the participants took a future-oriented perspective. The inter-relationship between B2B segmentation and marketing channels was also considered in this study as we explored go-to-market priorities. Overall, the value of business segmentation must be judged on its ability to improve marketing strategy and performance.” Hence, a major objective of market segmentation analysis is to find new and under-served markets. In addition to evaluating their perceptions of segmentation sophistication in their organizations, B2B marketing executives offered numerous real world insights and a “wish list” of how they can improve in this critical area. The work concludes with a research agenda relevant to business target marketing.

Campaign Targets Silicon Valley Companies as Joint Employers

Campaign Targets Silicon Valley Companies as Joint Employers

Indigenous Circuits: Navajo Women and the Racialization of Early Electronic Manufacture

From 1965 to 1975 the legendary Silicon Valley company Fairchild Semiconductor operated a state-of-the-art integrated circuit manufacturing plant in Shiprock, New Mexico on Navajo land. In the face of concerns about high-tech pollution, increasingly empowered labor organizations, and a newly politicized and visible American Indian civil rights movement, indigenous electronic workers at Shiprock were pressed into service as examples of the peaceful coexistence and integration of the past and the future, the primitive and the modern, creativity and capitalism. Navajo women workers were described as ideal predigital digital workers, uniquely suited to the job by temperament, culture, and gender. Their labor as platform builders was cited as evidence that digital work—the work of the hand and its digits—could be painlessly transferred from the indigenous cultural context into the world of technological commercial innovation, benefiting both in the process.

Can the Service Sector Strike?

As Silicon Valley companies have grown, with skyrocketing profits and public approbation, their executives have been startled recently to encounter an obstacle beyond their control: government regulation. Facebook now employs enough H1-B visa holders to trigger limits on its employment of hightech immigrant workers. For a company that has built a global empire on “sharing,” or moving user data through Facebook’s system as freely as possible, the prospect of limits—whether on the distribution of data or human resources—is not welcome. Facebook’s slogan, “move fast and break things,” takes as a given that the company is firmly in the driver’s seat, choosing its speed and what limits it will surpass, without its pace regulated by outside forces. Accustomed to relative technical sovereignty, Facebook and its cohort see the prospect of federal immigration restrictions not as a divergence of their interests with that of the public, but as an outdated threat from Washington, the imposition of old values on an ecosystem that has transcended them.

Mr. Zuckerberg Goes to Washington

As Silicon Valley companies have grown, with skyrocketing profits and public approbation, their executives have been startled recently to encounter an obstacle beyond their control: government regulation. Facebook now employs enough H1-B visa holders to trigger limits on its employment of hightech immigrant workers. For a company that has built a global empire on “sharing,” or moving user data through Facebook’s system as freely as possible, the prospect of limits—whether on the distribution of data or human resources—is not welcome. Facebook’s slogan, “move fast and break things,” takes as a given that the company is firmly in the driver’s seat, choosing its speed and what limits it will surpass, without its pace regulated by outside forces. Accustomed to relative technical sovereignty, Facebook and its cohort see the prospect of federal immigration restrictions not as a divergence of their interests with that of the public, but as an outdated threat from Washington, the imposition of old values on an ecosystem that has transcended them.

A Paradigm Shift Was Happening All Around Us

Thankfully, Ridley Scott's brilliant Super Bowl ad, proclaiming that 1984 won't be like 1984, heralded a Golden Age of Electronics instead of George Orwell's dyspeptic scenario. Apple's Macintosh debuted, Hewlett-Packard and its new LaserJet printer set record sales and profits for Silicon Valley companies, and I met Lynn Conway when we both joined the IEEE Spectrum Advisory Board. Although Conway was a bit shy and had held back from the limelight, I already “knew” her. As HP's Corporate Engineering Director, my job was to “know” the Valley. Operating a prototype Macintosh six months prior to introduction, I'd sparked Tom Whitney's Summerhill Partners' angel round that was the initial funding for Aldus Corporation and Pagemaker. I'd compared views with Xerox PARC's Warren Teitleman, both a Caltech classmate and a neighbor (with an Alto and then a Dorado by his home swimming pool). Warren and I had both known Carver Mead for 25 years. Mead was my senior advisor, urging me to join HP in 1962. By 1975, Mead and Conway were collaborating at PARC.

Taking a taste of Google [Back Story

Silicon Valley companies are famous for using such temptations as foosball tables, weekly massages, beer blasts, pet-sitting services, and other perquisites to lure smart techies. So with Google and Facebook in a death-match struggle for tech talent, you'd expect the perks battle to be epic. And you'd be correct. Google is, after all, the company that took the definition of free food upscale, from popcorn and soda to sashimi and Kobe beef, among other gourmet delectables. So what was Facebook to do? Well, the opening salvo left no doubt that Facebook meant business: It lured away three of Google's top chefs and one of the pastry chefs. Yes, this is what it has come to: chef poaching.

Innovative EcoCloud™ Helps Silicon Valley Companies Adopt Sustainable Practices

South Bay Water Recycling (SBWR) is a regional recycled water distribution system serving industrial and commercial customers in the area of northern California (USA) known as "Silicon Valley." In early 2008 the City of San José, as administering agency of the San José/Santa Clara Water Pollution Control Plant, implemented a Cooling Tower Initiative to encourage recycled water use by commercial and industrial facilities. In 2009, Sustainable Silicon Valley, a non-profit organization dedicated to a sustainable future, convened a meeting of utilities, high-tech and academics to discuss how local stakeholders might collaborate to improve the sustainable use of water in Silicon Valley. Out of these discussions emerged the concept of the EcoCloud™, a coalition of private companies, public utilities, environmental organizations and academic researchers who encourage each other to adopt sustainable practices, supported by the latest social networking and data analysis tools. While the initial focus of the EcoCloud™ is to help industrial facilities use water sustainably—especially by using recycled water for cooling—its long-term goal is to support all aspects of sustainability, including energy reduction, materials management and land use. The EcoCloud™ allowed the City of San José to move from a serial marketing to a group marketing model, reaching more potential customers and connecting more facilities to the recycled water system.Inspired by the concept of industrial ecology, the EcoCloud™ is designed to be a "virtual" industrial ecosystem where industry, government and educational institutions can work together to share information about all aspects of sustainability. Although industries in the EcoCloud™ are not located next to each other, they share a common interest in reducing energy usage, conserving resources, eliminating waste, and cutting costs to improve their bottom line. Just as "cloud computing" uses the distributed power of the internet for more efficient data processing, the EcoCloud™ harnesses the power of web-based social networking tools so local business leaders and facility managers can work with industry experts, technology innovators, university researchers and government agencies to make their enterprises more sustainable and more profitable.

How Does Usability Research Improve 21St Century Product Design?

Usability research is dramatically affecting product design in the 21st century. Five user experience and research managers from cutting-edge Silicon Valley companies discuss the strategic relationship between user research and product design, organizational processes that succeed in helping user research and user experience design improve products, and what's different about user research and user experience design for Internet companies and Web sites.