From Bloomberg
Why Silicon Valley Hasn't Moved to Texas (Yet)
Texas has a rich tech history, but it lacks California's startup culture.
by Justin Fox
... When the epicenter of the U.S. tech industry shifted from Route 128 in the Boston suburbs to Silicon Valley in the 1970s and 1980s... the main reason for the shift was that, as AnnaLee Saxenian explained to me a few years ago:
The Boston area was organized around these big, vertically integrated minicomputer companies — DEC, Data General. They were classic postwar American companies, with vertical hierarchies and career ladders. Planning and research happened at the top of the organization and then funneled down. Whereas in Silicon Valley you had, really by chance not design, a series of flat companies, with project-based teams that moved around. People moved between companies much more fluidly. At a time that technology and know-how were sort of trapped within the vertically integrated companies of Route 128, they were being continually recombined in Silicon Valley. That gave them a real edge in innovation.
Saxenian is dean of the School of Information at the University of California at Berkeley and author of the classic comparative study "Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128."...
