Technology was born in the garage.

From HP to Apple, and from Amazon to Google, it can be said that many well-known technology companies in the history of the United States are born in the garage, so there is a "garage culture," said. But why are they born in the garage? So some people say that is because garages are the only space in many families, so for young entrepreneurs is a very low-cost start-up sites. This is true, but after I came to Silicon Valley, I had a new understanding of the problem.

In America, renting is the first thing. Silicon Valley is sandwiched between the two major cities of San Francisco and San Jose, and the apartment houses are not much, and most of the rental houses I can find in Craigslist are independent villas in the surrounding towns. And I took advantage of the opportunity to see the house, incidentally also visited a few villas, and all of these houses have a street-facing garage with different layouts, some parked cars, some are completely free, but they are all in common--and there are a lot of tools stacked inside.

Now my landlord Vincent is a Chinese, engaged in machinery-related work. In his garage, there was a floor cabinet full of tools, mostly for car repairs and some for housing and electrical repairs. Vincent has three cars, and occasionally do some repairs and cleaning work. He said, change oil, battery and so on and some simple car repair work is his own hands; he also told me that such a situation is common in the United States: if there are no serious malfunctions, people will usually do their own thing in the garage--there are venues, there is room, and many Americans have the ability to repair their own cars.

I realized that the garage is not just a free physical space for many Americans, but a room full of tools, a place where many people learn and get used to doing things for themselves. And those who have made their fortune in garages (excluding Amazon, Google, etc.) need not only space but also these tools, and more importantly, many entrepreneurs, as soon as they enter the room, will have the idea of picking up tools, which is the passion needed for entrepreneurship.

But why do American families have garages like this?

As we all know, the United States is a "country on wheels"; Unless you live in a handful of big cities like New York and Chicago, no car can be nearly impossible. Because of the large volume of cars and the development of second-hand market, American car prices are relatively cheap.

On the other hand, the second-hand car also accompanied by a large number of failures, coupled with the United States did not mandatory scrap the age limit, the vehicle modification is also less restrictive, car owners of the demand for repair is unusually strong. However, because of the high cost of manpower, the cost of repairing cars is not cheap.

"It's too expensive to find a car repair shop," Vincent explained when he repaired the car. He said that on the one hand, U.S. car repair in addition to material costs, there is also an extra hour to calculate the cost of a car repairman, "very bad"; On the other hand, many car repair shops will persuade users to spend more money to repair the car: "They especially like to cheat some people who do not know the car, the problem described very serious, Then scare them into buying expensive parts. ”

In many Chinese forums, there are a number of people complaining about the cost of repairing cars in America. A lot of people who just came to the United States soon after buying a car for a few months of maintenance costs even more than the price of the car itself.

Because of this, many Americans who rely on cars and are not rich have had to learn the skills of car repair and have plenty of tools in their garages to cope with a rainy day.

In fact, whether it's a garage culture, a DIY culture or a culture of creation, the core of it is to do things by themselves, while behind it all has a higher cost of human resources-to avoid expensive expenses to ask others to do things, people have to learn to do it themselves.

Interestingly, although the high cost of human resources is not the decisive factor of innovation, but a lot of innovation is related to, for example, companies want to use machines to replace the artificial to reduce costs, thus contributing to the unmanned transport aircraft, 3D printers and various forms, various functions of the birth and development of robots. Some of the internet, mobile Internet applications were born in the United States, there are also factors.

And in a society with plenty of human resources, it's hard to imagine. In thinking about "Why China lacks innovation", perhaps the low cost of human resources is a cause to be overlooked.

Of course, the impact of high human costs is not all positive. It forces many low-income and even middle-class Americans to acquire more skills, do more work, such as repairing cars, home appliances, homes, and simple medical care; These jobs are clearly not good enough for the average person, and they are hard to be efficient at doing these things, and when people can't dens enough, The efficiency of society as a whole will also be affected.