Indian Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley: The Making of a Transnational Techno-Capitalist Class
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Indian Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley: The Making of a Transnati ...

Chapter 1:  From “The Valleyof Heart’s Delight” to “Silicon Valley”
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However, despite considerable investments by state agencies in New York, Oregon, and Texas, these attempts at imitation proved futile (Leslie, 2000). To understand why, we must look for clues in the larger geopolitical environment in which Silicon Valley was established, and at the conditions in which it flourished—aspects of which are hard to replicate in another place and at another time.

The popular image of the Valley is one in which cash-strapped innovators tinkered in their garages to create world-class technology products and highly successful commercial ventures. The phenomenal growth of companies with such humble beginnings (HP and Apple among them) attests to the veracity of the origin of these images. In fact, the “garage” has moved beyond being merely an object of popular myth, and is now preserved as a historical landmark. Outside 367 Addison Ave. in Palo Alto, a plaque entitled “The Birthplace of Silicon Valley” has the following inscrip-tion:

This garage is the birthplace of the world’s first high-technology region, “Silicon Valley.” The idea for such a region originated with Dr. Frederick Terman, a Stanford University professor who encouraged his students to start up their own electronics companies in the area instead of joining established firms in the East. The first two students to follow his advice were William R. Hewlett and David Packard, who in 1938 began developing their first product, an audio oscillator, in this garage.

This California Historical Landmark #836 fits well with the ideas of free market capitalism—of unfettered entrepreneurial energy driving local economies—thereby totally discounting the role of the state and state policy as engines of change. Although clusters of small firms in Santa Clara County were instrumental in creating a rival to the large established corporations of the East Coast, it is undeniable that Silicon Valley owes much to the legacy of the defense-driven policies of the federal government.