Are you a government bureaucrat desperate to leaven all the recent talk of cutbacks and austerity with a touch of high-tech fairy dust? Enjoy the idea of hobnobbing with exciting personalities like Steve Ballmer and Mark Hurd? Follow my simple guide and your country can also enjoy the limitless prosperity and social harmony with which the technology industry has blessed California!
First, you'll need a name. It has to start with the word 'Silicon', even if the only silicon that will be present comes stamped with the Intel logo. Next, choose a geographic feature. Unfortunately, the best geographic features have already been claimed. May I suggest "Silicon Muskeg"?
Now, if you visit the actual Silicon Valley, you will see a lot of office buildings. Ample supply of office space is the reason Silicon Valley is a success. So, the first thing you're going to need is a nice big, empty space to build offices. Lots of them. Try to find an economically depressed area, far from the places educated workers live (cheap!) and miles from public transit. Make sure this area is zoned so that only large, expensive cubicle farms and parking lots will be built, as this is the most efficient use of space. No services are necessary, as the people working here can simply drive into the city if they require food or drink.
Also, it is vital that your new offices be supplied with fiber-optic Internet service. Rare and difficult as this may be to provide, Internet service is what separates your mind-bending city of the future from the primitive hovels your country's technology industry now inhabits.
No replica of Silicon Valley would be complete without tenants! And so, your final task is to fill these offices with the industries that define the dynamism and forward-thinking spirit of Silicon Valley: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, and Dell! Don't waste your time on small fry: Fortune 500 only, please. It matters not if your new offices are filled with call centers and rebate-processing facilities, because the very soul of technology will leach from the telephones and TPS reports, permeating the landscape with the pure essence of innovation.
I'm guessing you aren't currently a part of the east london startup community.
I'm excited. When we moved the company here, one of my co-founders was deported (back to America). Not helpful. The investors here are very good (Index, Atlas, Accel, Eden, etc), but there's not a huge number of them. Official momentum like this has a good chance of getting other investors to have a more official presence here (a few from NY visit with some regularity, but we rarely see the valley's firms).
Little things like good internet will help a lot. My office has just 7 or 8 people in it and we're using a combination of two home DSL connections and a 3G modem. That's the best we can do and it's outrageously bad. Larger offices (20+ people) face an ongoing and unending battle just keeping their team online.
I don't really get the objection to the big tech companies having a presence.. in an ideal world would you want to boot them out of the valley, too? They offer jobs which are both an attraction to new tech talent from all over the EU and a fallback in the case that a startup doesn't work out. Without the presence of big tech companies, you also lose the primary acquirer of small tech companies.
Finally, and most importantly, they didn't just choose some arbitrary "poor" spot on the map. The particular area in east london they're targeting is arguably the best startup hub in Europe, and is undoubtedly the best in the UK. Lots of great founders are already here, and I'm pleased that there's some official support.
Silicon Muskeg? According to wiki: Muskeg is an acidic soil type common in Arctic and boreal areas, although it is found in other northern climates as well. Muskeg is more-or-less synonymous with bogland but muskeg is the standard term in Western Canada and Alaska (while bog is more common elsewhere).
That would be better for the tech hub near Cambridge, UK - Silicon Fen - not Shoreditch, East London
I still prefer Silicon Ditch - where we already have the pure essence of innovation permeating the landscape. Its just a grimey landscape, with fewer palms.
First, you'll need a name. It has to start with the word 'Silicon', even if the only silicon that will be present comes stamped with the Intel logo. Next, choose a geographic feature. Unfortunately, the best geographic features have already been claimed. May I suggest "Silicon Muskeg"?
Now, if you visit the actual Silicon Valley, you will see a lot of office buildings. Ample supply of office space is the reason Silicon Valley is a success. So, the first thing you're going to need is a nice big, empty space to build offices. Lots of them. Try to find an economically depressed area, far from the places educated workers live (cheap!) and miles from public transit. Make sure this area is zoned so that only large, expensive cubicle farms and parking lots will be built, as this is the most efficient use of space. No services are necessary, as the people working here can simply drive into the city if they require food or drink.
Also, it is vital that your new offices be supplied with fiber-optic Internet service. Rare and difficult as this may be to provide, Internet service is what separates your mind-bending city of the future from the primitive hovels your country's technology industry now inhabits.
No replica of Silicon Valley would be complete without tenants! And so, your final task is to fill these offices with the industries that define the dynamism and forward-thinking spirit of Silicon Valley: IBM, Microsoft, Intel, and Dell! Don't waste your time on small fry: Fortune 500 only, please. It matters not if your new offices are filled with call centers and rebate-processing facilities, because the very soul of technology will leach from the telephones and TPS reports, permeating the landscape with the pure essence of innovation.
So huzzah, dear bureaucrat, and godspeed!