Word: silicones
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...Austin provides a useful lesson in how to stay on top of the innovation game. Start with an educated population (43% of Austin residents have a bachelor's degree or higher), mix in a robust venture-capital scene (one of the best outside Silicon Valley), add a supportive community of peers (groups like Bootstrap Austin band together hundreds of entrepreneurs) and wrap all that up with a state government unafraid to throw money at companies that need a little help getting off the ground...
...President's Economic Recovery Advisory Board, a committee of corporate leaders and economists whom Obama brought inside the White House to advise on everything from regulatory reform to global warming. Formed during the transition, it included top fundraisers such as Hyatt family scion Penny Pritzker, Obama's Silicon Valley ally Doerr and two ambassadors from Wall Street, UBS's Robert Wolf and private-equity investor Mark Gallogly. This foursome and their spouses had collectively given roughly $2.4 million to Democrats since 2000. Doerr's venture-capital firm, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, made more than $1 million in donations to Democrats...
Doerr's journey to the Roosevelt Room is the stuff of Silicon Valley legend. Born in St. Louis, Mo., he got his first tech job in 1974 as an Intel engineer and went on to become a prescient bankroller of such companies as Google, Compaq and Amazon.com He later helped fund TechNet, the valley's first major Washington lobbying effort, and became close friends with then Vice President Al Gore, who has since become a partner at Kleiner Perkins. Doerr's enthusiasm and vision have been welcomed by the Obama team, just as they were by the Clinton Administration...
That is in marked contrast to the American experience. Leslie Berlin, project historian for the Silicon Valley Archives at Stanford University, says the U.S. government and large corporations did provide funding and even facilities to encourage innovation, which played a major role in the industry's success, but that "there has not been an effort to manage, to pick and choose what works," she said in a phone interview from California. "That is certainly not the way Silicon Valley has done it in the past." (See why President Obama wants a cybersecurity czar...
...this atmosphere of distrust, it is unclear whether the Kremlin will be able to foster an open culture of innovation, which Berlin at Stanford calls the main ingredient in Silicon Valley's success. Kolesnikov agrees. "What developed around Stanford was an entrepreneurial culture," he says. "I don't know how you create that. I guess it's up to the government to set up some kinds of conditions and leave people alone, stop freaking them out. Maybe something will come...