Silicon Valley Fails Well

I was at a keynote this afternoon with Geoffrey Moore, who was talking about models from his new book, “Dealing With Darwin”. I later realized that Geoff also has a blog where he has a recent entry called Top Ten Truths About the Digital Ecosystem, which is a good piece, especially Point No. 1.

I have always enjoyed Geoff’s books, especially “Crossing The Chasm”, which in my opinion is one of the best technology marketing books ever written.

Today, someone asked him from the audience about the future of Silicon Valley and the US. I liked his answer, and wanted to write about it in today’s blog post:

– Silicon Valley is very good at failing. Failing fast. Learning from failures. Using that learning to do new and different things. In any other place in the world, you get one chance, and if you fail, that carries a stigma for life, and you never get a second chance. Very powerful advantage.

– The US still has the best higher education system. Great universities.

– The US still has the most mature and best organized capital market.

These three, Geoff thought, could still help maintain the US lead.

On the negative side, he thought that the US has become very lazy. “We’ve had such a cushy life for so long, and during the boom years, things just became goofy.” Faced with hungrier competition, this can become the defining factor for this century.

There is a lot of discussion these days at the tech leadership circles about Silicon Valley’s chiefs starting to feel fatigued, especially in the context of the announcement of Bill Gates’ retirement from Microsoft. A friend of mine commented today: “I’ve heard some of them are taking the whole summer off.” Unheard of, when things were hot! Geoff also touched on this topic.

Well, I know I have a lot of passionate readers in Bangalore … do you think Bangalore has an answer to a Bill Gates or a Steve Jobs yet?