Regional advantage
by AnnaLee Saxenian · first published 1994
80% recommend10% neutral10% critical
Why HN recommends it
Explains why Silicon Valley outpaced Route 128 by comparing regional culture, company structures, and labor mobility. It offers insight into what makes a tech region work.
Common criticism: One critic says it gets key details of the Boston scene wrong
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
The book is a history and sociology of the differences between Silicon Valley and Route 128, the Boston tech corridor that was once considered a competitor to the Valley. It is very useful to understanding the structural causes of Silicon Valley’s success, showing that it was increased interpersonal and intercorporate sharing that made Silicon Valley continue to succeed after the shocks of the ’80s hammered both Silicon Valley and Boston’s Route 128.
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I'm currently reading Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by Annalee Saxenian, and I'm loving it. It covers the history and tech culture of Silicon Valley vs Boston. I'd recommend it to anyone trying…
on “Ask YC: Read any good books lately?” ↗…entirely wiped out like dinosaurs with the move from 5" HDDs to 3.5" HDDs and the move from mainframes to hobby personal computers. Clayton Christensen's "The Innovator's Dilemma" and AnnaLee Saxenian's "Regional Advantage" will do far more to explain why the engineering/computing world pre-1980s disappeared than any revisionist explanation.
A really good book to read on the subject is AnnaLee Saxenian's Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-Competition...). It discusses why Route 128 failed while Silicon Valley flourished. A major part…
on “Hawaii Bans Non-Compete and Non-Solicit Clauses in High-Tech Employment” ↗…Silicon Valley exist in places with base rates that more closely match the racial distribution you believe is ideal. AnnaLee Saxenian's books are instructive if you're curious how such regions are formed: "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" and "The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy". A big part of what you need to move is money (i.e. you need a robust angel investor…
…from automobiles (Detroit), insurance (London and Hartford CT), or movies (Hollywood and Bollywood (Mumbai)) to name three other examples. For some background on Silicon Valley see Anna Lee Saxenian's "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-Competition... "Clusters and the New Economics of Competition" by Michael E. Porter in the November-December…
on “Maroon on Techstars” ↗…back. He was a chemical engineer, but he had to work in a grocery store. It is amazing how low the barriers to entry are here. Anyone interested in how Silicon Valley became Silicon Valley should read Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 by AnnaLee Saxenian. In most of the world it is difficult to start a business. According to the Economist it takes $20,000 in fees and deposits…
on “After Credentials” ↗…work of building new technology businesses." Anyone remember "Silicon Gulch", or "Silicon Forest"? Anyone really interested in why Silicon Valley triumphed over Route 128 should read AnnaLee Saxenian's Regional Advantage. Hint: it was in great part due to the differences in personalities and business philosophies of William Hewlett-David Packard and Ken Olsen.
on “Route 128 / Wanted: A new identity” ↗…by Kenney http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Silicon-Valley-Entrepren... "The Silicon Valley Edge" by Lee, Miller, Hancock, and Rowen http://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Valley-Edge-Innovation-Entrepr... "Regional Advantage" Saxenian http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-Competition...
on “Silicon Valley: Abandoned” ↗…by Kenney http://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Silicon-Valley-Entrepren... "The Silicon Valley Edge" by Lee, Miller, Hancock, and Rowen http://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Valley-Edge-Innovation-Entrepr... "Regional Advantage" Saxenian http://www.amazon.com/Regional-Advantage-Culture-Competition... See also this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=908026
on “The Next Silicon Valley” ↗…one company and start a competitor." That right there is enough to give any engineer pause about going to work for a company in Seattle. Anna-Lee Saxenian's work in the dated, but still relevant "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" goes into a fair amount of detail how the non-compete environment on Route 128 ended up undermining the Boston area relative to the Bay area.…
on “Seattle, the New Center of a Tech Boom” ↗…WWII to Silicon Valley and Stanford. The two had polar opposite cultures. Gone were the cultures of places like DEC and IBM to be replaced with the cultures of HP then Apple. AnnaLee Saxenian's book "Regional Advantage" does a great job of chronicling that shift from Route 128 to Silicon Valley and how East Coast and West Coast tech culture differed. If you look at pretty much every story that talked about tech culture…
on “Before brogramming, table flipping, and beyond” ↗…to begin with). At best they will end up like Microsoft, simply extracting rent via their patent licensing program. For more information about Route 128 vs Silicon Valley, I cannot recommend the book Regional Advantage by AnnaLee Saxenian enough. It's a bit dated and academic, but it's fascinating if you want to understand why the tech industry in and around Boston lost to Silicon Valley despite having a huge head start.
on “Another Group of Google Veterans Starts a Self-Driving Technology Company” ↗…were the books explaining why were all these chip and computer companies started here? Why not elsewhere in the country or the world? With the exception of one great book, no one was writing about our regional advantage. That "one great book" is Saxenian's "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128". Which, ummm..., answers my own question. :) Re-reading that page by Blank reminds…
on “The History of Silicon Valley: Birth of Computers and the Internet” ↗The readers may be interested in "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128" by AnnaLee Saxenian, a professor at Berkeley: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0674753402/ref=cm_cr_pr_pro... The book was written in 1994,…
on “Why to Move to a Startup Hub” ↗I'd recommend reading Regional Advantage, the dominance of Silicon Valley/Bay Area is a lot more nuanced than just noncompetes, good universities, etc.
on “Strapped startup declines acquihire, Apple poaches key engineers; NP, says court [pdf]” ↗