Silicon Valley and Globalization

Today's Mercury News has front page coverage on Silicon Valley's gains from globalization. The article discusses the gains for Cisco, HP and other major multinationals based in Silicon Valley from global growth. The article also discusses the return of VC money flow to the Valley and points out that the valley is at the crossroads of venture capital with money flowing into the valley from all over the world and being invested worldwide.

There are some interesting statistics on the flow of venture capital to and from the rest of the world in the print edition. The charts don't show up in the link above for some reason. Perhaps, this is the most striking change from the '90s, when money flowed into the valley and stayed here. This led to the tech boom and the bust, of course. The Valley has recovered somewhat, but its far from the affluence of 2000. Perhaps, the return to glory for the valley will be in the form of the clean tech boom.

The Valley however, is still very attractive to the rest of the world. One other trend the Mercury News discusses is the ramping of the Valley presence of big tech companies like Nokia and Microsoft who seek to be closer to ideas, partners, investors and customers. As the column says, it appears the world is flat and Silicon Valley is at the center of it and the next wave appears to be clean technology. I will root for that.

Madan