|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
   |
SILICON VALLEY MAILBAG
SILICON VALLEY: Silicon Valley made a great issue, but perhaps you missed a part of the story that might add to the valley mystique. There was a burst of high tech creativity and entrepreneurial activity here in the late 20s and early 30s; The vacuum tube, Philo Farnsworth's development of the first electronic television, Ernest Lawrence's cyclotron, early maritime transocean radio transmitters, and the Varian brothers klystron tubes enabling radar and particle accelerators. These all may have been stimulated by the same magic of great universities, sources of seed money, the good weather, and personal freedom--all of which are still at work today. I'm writing on behalf of my father, Arch Brolly, who even in the late 20s was educated in electronics at Berkeley, Harvard, and MIT but returned to the valley to work in radio transmitter design, helped adapt radio transmitter magnets for the first cyclotron and was chief engineer for Farnsworth in the Green Street lab in San Francisco, where the first electronic television system was demonstrated in 1934.
Stuart Brolly
Your special issue on Silicon Valley was excellent and so far the best on the valley's strengths. I am myself an ex-valley semiconductor process engineer. No credit was given to the aerospace industry in the valley, which started an innovative culture and spirit. Even the initial contracts for the semiconductor industry were for the aerospace and military. The Moffet Field (airfield), NASA Centers, and Lockheed Martin were pioneers in developing the "Jet age". In later years, the region's focus shifted towards a more commercial and consumer market.
Sunish Gupta
I thoroughly enjoyed your coverage of the birth and growth of Silicon Valley over the past 40 years. However, you neglected to mention one of the original pioneers of the Valley. Forty-one years ago, IBM invented the disk drive at its Storage Systems Division headquarters in San Jose. Without the hard drive, many of the companies mentioned in your article would not exist. Even today, IBM is still on the cutting edge of disk drive technology. IBM invented and has been utilizing magnetic head technology since 1991 where their competitors are still struggling with first generation MR. So, even though IBM is headquartered in New York, they still have a lot of developments coming out of the Valley.
Keith Ferrell
IBM, never mentioned in your article, invented and pioneered the disk file in the Valley before it changed from germanium to silicon. It also pioneered most of the advances which have sustained the growth of the storage and attachment companies on your map. There is a role for sustained, well capitalized R&D in the innovation process By the way, Dr. E. F. Codd, then of IBM Research in San Jose invented the relational database technology which allows Larry Ellison to stand tall on your cover. Also, Al Shugart managed IBM's disk engineering before he left and eventually formed Seagate. There is more to technology advancement than Stanford and venture capital.
Glenn Bacon
Your article on "Silicon Valley: How it really works" (Cover Story, Aug. 18-25) was right on target in a number of areas, especially about culture, people, and the entrepreneurial spirit. Our MBA students take it seriously when one of their classmates talks about starting his or her own business--which is often just so much "hot air" among students at other universities across the country and outside America. Under-appreciated in your analysis, however, was the important role played by business schools within Silicon Valley. While engineering and technology are important, without business acumen, the best ideas never see the light of day (or reach the end user, like a customer). That's why so many people with engineering and technical backgrounds pursue their MBA--because they want to find out how to translate their ideas into applications and enterprises that will change the world. Santa Clara University, as just one example, has provided graduate business education for more people at Hewlett-Packard than any other collegiate institution. In business schools, aspiring entrepreneurs learn about pricing, distribution channels, inventory and manufacturing systems, organizational structures, and build leadership and policy analysis skills. It's where they branch out and start finding that such "non-technical" journals as Business Week, the Wall Street Journal, Fortune, and others have something to contribute to their effectiveness. As every venture capitalist knows, ideas are cheap (that is they're plentiful). What's rare is the individual or team who can generate revenue from that idea!
Barry Z. Posner, Dean
I applaud your coverage of Silicon Valley in your recent issue. I was surprised to see however, that you had completely omitted San Jose State University from any editorial (other than the Editor's Memo) as well as the map of Silicon Valley. I don't doubt SJSU has not contributed the number of CEOs to Silicon Valley that Stanford has. However, I can't believe the hundreds of engineers and marketing professionals pouring out of SJSU into the valley ever year doesn't warrant some comment, or at the least a "place of interest" on the map. After all, Mr. Packard and Mr. Hewlett not only recognized the university as a quality educational institution, but thought SJSU a valuable enough investment to give millions to the engineering department.
Ann Troussieux
What about healthcare?? Your fine article ignored the dramatic advances in healthcare technology made by the many healthcare entrepreneurs in the Valley. The contributions of Drs. Chin, Fogerty, Moll, Perkins, Simpson and others to the health and welfare of humanity and the vast amounts of capital invested by the Mayfields of the Valley merit at least a mention alongside the many micro-niche, hardly compelling Internet plays that dominated the article.
Joe Mandato
As a proud Berkeley grad, I have to point out that your story "A Wellspring Called Stanford" (8/18-8/25/97) unfairly slights the contribution of UC Berkeley to Silicon Valley. First, your Stanford progeny chart seems to imply that the founders are all fellow alums of Stanford. Not so. Apple's Steve Wozniak and Marimba's Kim Polese are Berkeley grads. You could have easily constructed a progeny chart that's based on Berkeley and it would be equally as impressive as the one for Stanford. For starters, the Berkeley progeny chart could begin with Intel (Gordon Moore and Andrew Grove) and include other prominent firms such as Softbank (Masayoshi Son) and Apple (Steve Wozniak).
William Liu E-mail Address: wliu@soda.berkeley.edu
CAN YOU TRANSPLANT I had to chuckle when I read, "It Must Be Something in the Water". I thought of what happened to me in the past few weeks: My banker told me that my software company needed assets "like trucks or machinery or something." Our ad for Internet programmers produced effectively nothing in response. I drove two and a half hours past our own airport so that I could take a one hour flight at reasonable fares. Then top that off with a state government that can't distinguish computer services from products and you have an environment that is far from conducive in building the "next Silicon Valley". A locality must be willing to make major fundamental changes throughout its society to reproduce what Silicon Valley has. Building a "research park" and luring a huge semiconductor factory is not the answer to building local wealth in the computer industry. It requires an investment in the schools and universities to produce the talent to fuel the development. It requires the academics to build curricula that attract the intelligent students. It requires other businesses to learn the nuances of the computer industry to foster its growth. And it takes local and state governments to create sensible policies that adapt to this fast growth industry. Until then, those billion-dollar ideas will not be attracted to your locality. Those that choose to stay in hostile conditions waste too much valuable time fighting unnecessary battles. It isn't that we want to leave our hometowns and move to friendlier places, it becomes our only option.
Bob Dust, President
My wife and I lived 11 years in Silicon Valley, My wife was a nuclear medicine technologist in Palo Alto and I was a chief engineer of a heavy truck assembler and then V.P. of a bus and motor home chassis assembler. Although salaries and benefits are high for the 20% in the computer industry, the remaining 80% do not get premium pay or benefits to compensate for the 40% higher living costs. High Silicon Valley taxes, shipping, and environmental costs forced the 1993 closure of our up-to-date Bay area manufacturing and headquarters facility. We could not attract experienced engineers because of the high living costs and hence had to train California new graduates. The Bay area weather of low humidity, no winter, and the natural air-conditioning of the prevailing winds over the Bay waters is the best in the U.S. Our state income tax was 11% (now 9.3%), sales tax is 8.25%, and property taxes for a 70% size home on a 1/5th acre lot are double those of the Midwest. Only food costs are equal. Adapting to the reduced life quality of high taxes, the constant noise of freeways 1/2 miles from most homes, neighbors blasting stereos only 15 feet from your bedroom, and the bumper-to-bumper commute, even on weekends finally forced a home sale during the 1989-1994 California recession, at a significant loss, and a move back to the Midwest. We don't miss the day to day commute, high tax, and noise trauma--but we miss the weather.
Joseph J. Neff
In your issue focusing on Silicon Valley, you made a significant omission in the section entitled "Beyond the Valley." More so than Taiwan and Malaysia, Israel is home to high-tech entrepreneurs starting their own successful businesses. Israelis are a highly educated population with a diehard spirit and strong technological training from their military experiences. This combination has created a high tech and venture capital boom in Tel Aviv that can only be matched by Silicon Valley and the Route 128 belt in Boston. Hopefully, you will correct this error by highlighting companies like Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. and VocalTec Inc. in an upcoming issue of your magazine that has a section which you may choose to call "Silicon Valley East."
Jeffrey M. Anapolsky
HOW GREEN I enjoyed your feature on Silicon Valley. Now if only Business Week would be as impressed with the natural ecosystem as you seemed to be with "The rich ecosystem of Silicon Valley," you folks in New York would finally have a clue about how things ought to work.
Tye Warren Simpson
OF COMPUTERS, LOVE, "Many young girls shy away from math and computers because they see them as a boy's province." ("Why women are so invisible") What?! I have never in my life heard a woman say that she wanted to be a mathematician or a computer scientist when she was young, but then decided to go into some other area because there were more women there. The reason that not nearly as many women go into these areas is simply because, for whatever reason, they aren't interested. To be really successful in computer science (and math, and engineering, ... ) you need to truly love what you are doing. There are precious few males who aspire to be among the best of the best in these areas, and there are unfortunately even fewer women. Apparently, more males are able to fall in love with the beautiful logic of computers than women are. I wish this were not so.
Geoff Busker
MY FAVORITE Your article entitled, "Starting Up Again and Again and Again" (Silicon Valley, Movers and Shakers, Aug. 18-25) about entrepreneurs with a track record of multiple successes. I'd like to add another name for your list and future consideration. Donald McKinney is the founder and Chairman/CEO of International Network Services, based in Sunnyvale, Calif. INS is a worldwide provider of network integration and management services which optimize the performance of large-scale, mission-critical, enterprise networks. INS' financial performance has won the company recognition in a number of published company rankings. For instance, Red Herring Magazine identified INS as among the Top 100 Technology Companies of 1997, based on financial performance, technological innovation, and quality of management (September, 1997). This is Don's fourth successful start-up. He was a part of the original management team at Silicon Graphics. From there he helped to found Chromatics, a high resolution video display terminal manufacturer in Georgia, now known as BARCO Chromatics. He returned to Silicon Valley and helped to launch Electronics for Imaging, a provider of hardware and software products for the digital color imaging market. Along the way, Don did stints at Sequoia Capital, learned the ways of the venture capital and investment banking worlds, and built his Rolodex with the names of key players in the Valley. The success of INS can be directly linked to Don's experience building successful new ventures.
Jeffrey M. Kaplan
NOW HERE'S Your report was a great read. However, I do have one question: Where can I buy into the company that has discovered "prune orchards?" It appears that someone has eliminated quite a few production steps. P.S. Do they do raisin vines too?
Dave Petheram
I enjoyed the special issue on Silicon Valley, and I thought that you might enjoy this perspective from the eyes of a six-year old. After reading a portion of the report to my son, Scott, I discussed what silicon is and the importance of silicon to the entire region. He thought the cities should be renamed "Sand Francisco" and "Sand Jose."
Keith Herrmann
|
Updated Sept. 8, 1997 by bwwebmaster
Copyright 1997, by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
Terms of Use