The bright brigade

For decades, Silicon Valley has been the holy grail of innovation. Having read and heard innumerable stories on what makes the Valley tick, I was very keen to find out why most things that most people (including me) can’t live without today — the computer, internet, mobile phones and yes, Google and Facebook — come from this tiny region that until the 1960s was the largest fruit production and packaging region in the world. Here’s my two cents on it. For all the attention it gets, Silicon Valley seems to give a #%@k. It has its own disco going on, reimagining what an ideal world would be like and building products and technologies that challenge the status quo. 

Money, though important, doesn’t drive everything. Where else would a 23-year-old CEO turn down a $3 billion offer for a zero-revenue company, like Snapchat did? Crazy? Perhaps. But when you are convinced you are changing the world (which every entrepreneur I met was), you refuse to put a price tag on your work. You may argue about the relevance of Snapchat but the fact is, it is changing how people communicate. 

And therein lies Silicon Valley’s reason for success: that companies here are able to connect the dots of the future when most of us aren’t seeing any. They remain as unapologetic about their failures as they are unabashed about their successes.  

Several attempts to recreate Silicon Valley in other parts of the world have met with little success because there is no method to the madness here. As they have figured what works for them, so should Bengaluru, Beijing and Tel Aviv. Not only should we learn how entrepreneurs in the Valley are able to redefine the future, their attention to detail and the way they wear failure as a badge of honour, but we also need to use the learning to develop original ideas to solve problems back home.