Is Silicon Valley Losing Its Edge?

Smart people live in the sun.

Silicon Valley did lose its edge but it's not because geography. It's because they stopped investing in good ideas and started investing in people in their power network who had any idea whatsoever. The idea being that if you clawed your way to be CEO of some company you are naturally brilliant and your ideas are made of money. They began ignoring the little people with bright, innovative ideas in favor of honchos with thick resumes. Not to mention they truly ignore women entrepreneurs, and I mean IGNORE.

Silicon Valley did lose its edge but it's not because geography. It's because they stopped investing in good ideas and started investing in people in their power network who had any idea whatsoever. The idea being that if you clawed your way to be CEO of some company you are naturally brilliant and your ideas are made of money. They began ignoring the little people with bright, innovative ideas in favor of honchos with thick resumes. Not to mention they truly ignore women entrepreneurs, and I mean IGNORE.

$150 oil , gas 5 dollars and republicans trying to get the presidency. any comment on this

extortionate home prices, high taxes, mediocre schools (at best), jammed roads. Si Valley. And yet a great police to innovate.

When the republicans out of the White House, everything will innovate again!

gas prices, inflation and the economy all started taking a turn for the worse after the dems took control over congress and among other things, raised minimum wage...coincidence? I think not!!!

Chinese, Israeli, Korean and Indian talent is returing to their home countries...as good if not better work and living conditions..

Agreed - that Silicon Valley is too expensive and you need twice the capital to achieve the same results any where else. However, part of this higher cost is balanced with the availability of experienced quality technical people with strong technical base. The quality of people in the valley is the first rate and that means you can achieve higher productivity with a small team, and attempt things in way that will not be doable any where else that easily. I have seen a team of 4 or 5 people doing what any where else is done by 10, 15 or even 20 people teams. This may not be the case for web 2.0 portals which requires mundane programming skills commonly available everywhere, but if you are doing cutting edge routers, optical switches, ASICS Design or wireless equipment - the valley is still the place to do start ups.

SV losing its luster, don't think so. People who think the Dem's control of congress recently tarnished SV are the source of its hindrance. These narrow minded folks stifle our creativity and really disgusts me.

Love the comment on outsourcing of teams to Vancouver, Europe, or Israel and that its cheaper there... Yes right, with the downturn of the economy it's the USA which is going to become cheaper.... I would argue all those places mentioned are just as expensive as da VALLEY, just maybe a different tax structure...

I live here. I have seen this coming for 10+ years. Electronics is a maturing technology with a slowing innovation rate. Another problem is the emerging engineering excellence in other parts of the world leaving Silicon Valley with a smaller slice of the pie. Further, with baby boomer managers retiring being replaced by X generation managers there are serious problems. The latter are more impressed by boasting than tallent and hire the most prolific boasters for employees. Boasting and talent are inversely related.

I only watch because it's a Sarah Lacy video.

A French VC and a journalist talking about SV and technology innovation. The title is misleading as well, they stop talking about it 1min after it has started.

Interesting video. Silicon Valley is still a great place to find the top people and investors however I believe for development of new technologies most companies are going to look to China and India. Our company is benefiting greatly from the ample supply of Chinese PhDs and Government incentives for hiring them. See http://www.cio.com/article/135750 , Nearly 3,000 PhDs in computer science each year and more than 500,000 Bachelor's in Computer Science/Engineering in China alone! Nathan Lands www.hiyaya.com Tampa Florida, Shanghai, Beijing, Wuhan China