Indian Entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley: The Making of a Transnati ...

An indigenous industry would provide reasons for the best engineering talent at Stanford to stay on in the region and contribute to its growth, and also attract other highly skilled professionals to migrate to the area. Within a few decades, Silicon Valley was not only witnessing migration from other parts of the United States, but the area had also emerged as a prime destination for highly skilled and educated immigrants from around the world. By 1990, more than a third (36%) of immigrant engineers from Asia reported an intention to live in the San Francisco Bay Area (Kanjanapan, 1995).

Terman’s plans for Stanford encompassed not just the university campus but also the region as a whole. The son of a Stanford psychology professor, he had grown up on its campus and had attended Stanford University for his undergraduate training. He received a PhD at MIT in electrical engineering, and returned to Stanford in 1925 as professor of engineering. During the Second World War, he worked as director of a research laboratory at MIT. He was greatly impressed by the significant role played by research conducted at East Coast universities. With the intention of ensuring that Stanford would not lag behind, he returned to Stanford in 1946 with a new title, Dean of Engineering, and in his new role, he transformed the campus and its relationship with both the military and industry. Terman wanted to strengthen Stanford’s engineering department in certain specialty fields, and to do this, he followed the lead of universities on the East Coast that benefited from governmental funding.