Unlocking an answer you won't find on Google

Trying to clone Silicon Valley, Google’s home, is easier said than done

LAST WEEK, I sat outside in the California sunshine at Google headquarters in Mountain View – aka the Googleplex – and talked to some gigglers about whether it was pure chance, or a set of specific factors, that has made Silicon Valley the world’s centre for technological innovation.

The context of the conversation itself, I think, provides some of the answer. Although I was scheduled to interview one of Google’s engineers at 3:30, I had been invited to take a tour of the Googleplex at 2pm.

You could easily spend hours meandering around and talking to people in divisions working on search, where Google corners the market, then advertising, and then there’s Google’s mobile platform, Android, and its web browser and operating system, Chrome – plus all the various apps and services.

And there’s always the legal end of things, as Google has had its share of controversy on privacy issues in particular, with the EU currently rattling sabres.

But that wasn’t the plan – if there was one in any formal sense. Google has a reputation for being slightly disjointed and quirky at times, especially in terms of organisation, and that was certainly the case here. I arrived at two and had a friendly, albeit brief, walkabout with a very nice young woman who had been at Google for all of five months.

Then she had to go to meetings, and so I was handed to someone in the communications division, who suggested we go sit down at a picnic table, out past the life-sized model of a T Rex skeleton covered in plastic flamingos, the volleyball court and outdoor vegetable garden.

I assumed this would be for some kind of briefing or the continuation of the tour, but instead I was thrown the musing question about Silicon Valley innovation: why here, in this place? Oh, OK.

We’d only just begun to chat about this when we were joined by another googler who had worked in the Dublin office and said he had wanted to connect at some point either before or after the scheduled interview. So he sat down and jumped into the chat. The more, the merrier.

I had absolutely no idea why we were all sitting there having this conversation, interesting and enjoyable though it was.

For my part, I noted that the question is one that comes up all the time. For example, only two months ago, Stanford president (and adviser to the UCD/TCD Innovation Alliance) John Hennessy tackled the question before an audience at Trinity.

As he noted then, everybody who comes to visit Stanford asks this question, usually phrased as an inquiry about concocting the exact recipe for Silicon Valley, so it can be duplicated back home.

What national region or country would not want to copy a system that turns out so many of the world’s top technology companies, and which takes in the bulk of US venture capital every year? In the first quarter of this year, for example, Silicon Valley took in $2.49 billion (€1.74 billion) in venture investment for 212 companies.

The second largest region was New England, which lagged well behind at $639 million for 90 companies, and the investment declines steeply after that.

Hennessy also noted that of course there was a factor of chance that came into play very early on. You had the can-do mentality that came with California’s pioneer territory, inherently pro-entrepreneurial. Stanford, the university that churns out tech companies, was located in the heart of the region, along with the University of California at Berkeley, which has a very strong engineering and computer science department.

Then there were some early companies that grew to be huge – such as Hewlett-Packard in the 1930s and microchip pioneers Fairchild Semiconductor, which would spin out Intel (with Fairchild itself spun out of William Shockley’s pioneering Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View). Spin-outs of spin-outs of spin-outs, the classic valley story.

And there’s the weather. Neither too hot nor too cold, right on the edge of San Francisco Bay, with easy access to the sea, the mountains and one of the world’s most beautiful cities.

Yes, chance brought some of these factors together, but mostly the valley slowly evolved over the last 100 years or so. Trying to duplicate such organic growth is unlikely ever to succeed in whole.

Still, as the googlers noted, you can have successful regions – the Boston and Cambridge areas of Massachusetts, New York’s silicon alley, and Austin, Texas are just some examples, with many other US and international locations as well.

As we talked, it occurred to me that all these people – the young googlers, sharp, and confident – were part of the answer. None were native Californians; all had come from other states. They fitted or adapted quickly to the odd, energetic, forward thinking work culture of the valley.

Work is hard, but work is fun. They liked the weather, they liked the energy, they liked the opportunity and the quirky, loose management style that exemplifies so many valley companies. They liked the ability to work between offices in other states and other countries.

And then to come back to the valley, where many will spin out the next generation of valley innovation.