The revelation of Entrepreneurial Ecology (middle): The Tesla of Silicon Valley and Israel

Editor's note: Zhan-LU Culture recently launched the book, "Imagination: The Art and Science of creativity," the author Jonah Lehrer to examine how a viable entrepreneurial ecosystem is growing, I think, this for us to have a very high reference meaning. There are many incubators and business circles in the country, but we still have a lot to improve in comparison with Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv. At this point, the Zhan-Lu culture opens to 36 of Krypton, the chapter "Urban friction: the idea of collision leads to more associations," a gift that we have given to entrepreneurs and investors, as well as to creating incubators for innovation.

The decline of route 128th and the rise of Silicon Valley

Route 128th is a half-ring highway in Boston. The road starts with the Massachusetts Gloucester fishing port, two lanes and bends over the Boston suburbs. The highway became synonymous with High-tech industry in the United States in the the early 1950s, with large and small high-tech companies spreading on both sides of the road. In 1955, Businessweek called Route 128th the "Miracle semicircle", while Forbes called it "the American Science and Technology Highway." This is particularly the case in Waltham and Newton Towns, where many industrial parks and glass-walled office buildings soon appeared on the land of the two towns. By 1970, 6 of the world's 10 largest technology companies were located near Route 128th, including DEC (Digital equipment Corporation) and Thor (Raytheon). The "Miracle of Massachusetts" has begun to emerge.

By 1985, the High-tech companies in Silicon Valley were almost twice times more likely to work in the 128th. Over the next few years, the West Coast has grown in strength: Internet companies such as Netscate, Google, Netflix and Facebook have sprung up around San Jose. Although Facebook was founded in February 2004 in a Harvard dorm, Mark Zuckerberg moved the company to Palo Alto in the summer of that year. In his view, this is more conducive to business. A large number of veteran technology companies in the Boston area have gone bankrupt, such as Dec and Wang Laboratories. In less than 50, the San Jose Walnut Forest became the center of Science and Technology around the world.

New vision of Creativity: Most of the tech companies on Route 128th are big companies that can achieve self-sufficiency. They attach great importance to secrecy, strict non-compete clauses and confidentiality agreements: A company's former employees are barred from working with rival companies, and researchers are not allowed to publish articles in peer-reviewed journals. The vertical culture of these companies causes information to flow only vertically, new ideas can only be transferred within the company. Companies in the San Jose area are small and inexperienced, often having to collaborate on the same project or share engineers. The level of interactive culture has accomplished Silicon Valley.

What led to this innovation gap? Indeed, some of the factors that have led to the decline of the Boston tech industry are the advantages of Boston, at least in the first place. For decades, Saxenin wrote, Route 128th was dominated by a handful of large companies (for example, only one company in Dec had at least 120,000 employees). These companies are so large that most of them can be self-sufficient. Dec not only produces computers, but also manufactures the chips used in the computer, and designs the software used in these chips. Gordon Bell, a vice-president for research and development at DEC, likened the company to "a huge entity that works like an island in the regional economy". As a result, Boston's tech companies attach great importance to secrecy: Dec researchers are not allowed to talk to Wang Computer's researchers about work or share ideas with Lotus employees. These companies strictly enforce non-compete clauses and non-disclosure agreements: A former employee of a company is barred from working with rival companies, and researchers are not allowed to publish articles in peer-reviewed journals. This means that the information flow of the company on Route 128th is vertical, with new ideas and innovations only moving within the company.

For companies on Route 128th, vertical systems are good for protecting their intellectual property, but they are not conducive to innovation. The reason why the city has the creativity, the free flow of information is the Shoukong, we need this knowledge to spread. In cities, people in the same ZIP code area can exchange ideas and work together. However, the situation on route 128th is completely different. Despite Boston's talent, there is a lack of interaction among these people – every company is an island, and the end result is that innovation is hard to find.

The vertical culture of the Boston tech industry contrasts with the Silicon Valley's level of interactive culture. Because companies in the California area are small and inexperienced, they often have to collaborate on the same project or share engineers. This leads to the formation of cross relationships, it is normal for Cisco researchers to make friends with Oracle employees, or the founders of Intel to provide management advice to Apple's young executives, which we have discussed earlier on how these levels of interaction can lead to insights.

TEL AVIV, Israel's "Silicon Valley"

According to statistics, in 2008, Israel attracted nearly 2 billion dollars of venture capital, that is, for small companies with rapid development potential (venture capital is widely regarded as one of the best means of innovation, money is always around the good ideas). This means that a country with only 7 million people is attracted to the same amount of venture capital as France and Germany combined. As a tiny, Vermont State size of the Mediterranean, Israel has a per capita risk investment of almost 3 times times that of the United States, and 30 times times the amount of venture capital per capita in western European countries.

But Israel is not born to be a technology center, and it has not hatched many successful startups in the past. In the the 1990s, Israel was famous for its military and agricultural products, which produced advanced radar systems and also exported avocados. "At that time, Israel had almost no investment in people's technology," Valdez said. No one talks about Israel's software, microelectronic chips or batteries, and people are talking about drip irrigation technology. "But by the year 2009, the number of companies listed on the Nasdaq has surpassed that of Canada," he said. Over the past 10 years, Israel has surpassed Japan, India, South Korea and the UK in the number of successful start-ups in the High-tech sector.

Josi Valdi is a key figure in this technological boom, helping to invest in 70 technology companies and 12 companies to go public. Sergey, co-founder of Google Inc., once said: "If there is an internet bubble in Israel, Valdez is a bubble." ”

Israel is a small country with little land and a smaller population. Valdez said: "In the country, small also has a small advantage." In Israel, the social network between people is very simple: everyone is familiar with each other. If you are not familiar with someone, you may only be separated from one another, and you can easily find them. In the developed world, Israel's population density is second, and 91% of the population lives in urban areas, which is a favorable condition. "The closeness of Israel's social network means that people's ideas can be spread at a very rapid rate, and that the knowledge overflow will never cease."

Take Valdez, who thinks that his information about startups is obtained when chatting with others. He said: "Usually, a friend tells me about his friend, and his friend has a good idea." Then I talked to people about the good idea and they thought it was a good idea. Maybe they'll talk to someone else about the idea, but before anyone knows it, we've got an investment plan. That's why this process always works. ”

In fact, weak relationships are one of the most important factors in creativity, which is why the cities that encourage everyone to expand their social circle are more innovative, and Tel Aviv and San Jose are the best examples. Martin Ruef, a sociologist at Princeton, Martin Luff The importance of the entrepreneur's personal relationship. He interviewed 766 graduates at Stanford Business School who had started their own businesses. Luff is most interested in the social networking structure of these people. He found that most entrepreneurs have a relatively narrow circle of contacts, and they may have many good friends, but these friends may all come from the same place and have a consistent interest. Instead of building a weak connection with people from different companies, they are connecting with people around them. This is not surprising: all of us are inherently "self-segregate" and prefer to stay with people like us.

But not every entrepreneur's social network is so narrow. In fact, Luff found a small group of entrepreneurs: they had a lot of weak connections and were good at making new friends on a variety of occasions. These entrepreneurs are not always with colleagues and good friends, their social network is wide and colorful, unexpected interaction can happen at any time, and rich in "information entropy" (informational entropy, chaos defined system with entropy, crowded sidewalk is the best example). These entrepreneurs can chat with new people at meetings and chat with people they don't know in local cafes. In other words, like Josi Valdi, they always interact with all kinds of people.

Then, Luff an analysis of each entrepreneur from the perspective of innovation. The result was a surprise: the entropy network Entrepreneur's ability to innovate is 3 times times higher than that of a small network entrepreneur made up of good friends. These people will not stick to stereotypes, will not put forward the stereotypical ideas, but will create a new concept that brings considerable benefits.

Luff's analysis tells us that focusing on individuals alone does not capture the root of innovation. In fact, if we fight single-handedly, we simply cannot produce the most creative ideas. Instead, these most creative ideas come from our social circle, from the people we meet who inspire us.

A new perspective on creativity: the social relationship between Israelis accelerates the country's innovation: people who don't know each other communicate knowledge and produce new knowledge. All this will benefit from the presence of the Israeli reserve forces. In Israel, most men under the age of 55 are served in the army for several weeks each year. The reserve forces have created a huge network of weak relationships across the country, and these soldiers are able to reconnect with the rest of the army every year. They have to socialize with all kinds of people, not just close friends.

PostScript: Thank Zhan-Lu Culture Chairman Han Yu and Miss Sun Yu quickly contributed to the publication.