Via Stowe this morning: When It Comes To Innovation, Geography Is Destiny – New York Times. This little article dives right into the guts of some of our TorCamp conversations.
SIR PETER HALL, the British scholar of urban clusters, asks in
“Cities in Civilization,” his history of geography and business
innovation: “What makes a particular city, at a particular time,
suddenly become immensely creative, exceptionally innovative? Why
should this spirit flower for a few years, generally a decade or two at
most, and then disappear as suddenly as it came?”Sir Peter’s
words highlight an enduring human mystery. In the case of Silicon
Valley, the world rightly waits for the flame of creativity to burn
out. That’s fair enough. To each, a season (or maybe a few). Living
long and large, Silicon Valley surely will wither like a dead flower
someday. My advice, though, is: Don’t hold your breath.
Paul Graham says “you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds”: http://paulgraham.com/siliconvalley.html
All due respect to Paul Graham, but rich people and nerds gather in places for specific reasons.
Sense of place is a critical strategic lever in the creative economy. Geography may be destiny, but it is the people that create a sense of place from that geography. There is path dependence, to be sure, but the word “destiny” implies fate, which implies helplessness.
And THAT, I simply cannot accept.