are we overdoing silicon valley?

Are we overdoing Silicon Valley?November 10th, 2011

19h00-20h30

1/5 - Intro

About Me- From Ireland, have also lived in US, UK, Norway, France, Spain

- Founding Team, Marrakech.com (raised $75m, Employed 250 people, still used today)

- MBA, IE Business School 2004

- Now VP Stratemic Capital

- Mentor at Venture Lab, Startup Bootcamp, Wayra

“Be a node … not a cluster”

2/5- Silicon Valley

3/5- Research

“Pick a hot industry, build a technology park next to a research university, provide incentives for businesses to

relocate, add some VC and then watch the magic happen”.

Vivek Wadhwa

- communication channels that local entrepreneurs maintain to the outside world

- open-mindedness toward foreign cultures, change and new ideas”. - Regional and national clusters are “irrelevant for innovation”

Key Drivers of Innovation

Companies that maintain ties only with players within the same cluster are four times LESS LIKELY to innovate

than those which were globally connected.

4/5 - Takeaways

José María Álvarez-PalleteCEO of Telefónica EuropeWayra Founder & Architect

- “We want to occupy the technology around telecoms. We need to take advantage of our proximity to the customer.

- “We do not want to go to California for new technology. I want to have this in London, Berlin, Munich, Prague and Dublin

– to create local silicon valleys around the world that are all connected. It is about creating the right ecosystem for this to work.”

“Of all required criteria, it is essential that the chosen entrepreneurs work in a global mindset, believing that the route to success is via expansion not isolation.”

“Silicon Valley, despite being at the center of the digital world, is a hopelessly insular and actually rather hermetic place.

Even its famous immigrant culture emphasizes joining the SV way.

For all its talk of innovation, it resists almost anyone who is not part of its mainstream“

5/5 – Further Discussion

“Spain needs a new economic model”

There was very little difference between the policies of Socialist Prime Minisiter

Felipe González from 1982–96 and the so called modernization programme of the

Franco dictatorship from the late 1950s.

The strategy for relaunching the economy in the 1980s was based on deepening

Spain’s existing ‘specializations’ in tourism, property development and construction, as

‘competitive advantages’

“Para promover el espíritu emprendedor como motor de nuevos empleos y fuente inagotable de innovación en España”

("To promote the spirit of entrepreneurship as an engine of new jobs and inexhaustable source of innovation in Spain")

How do we unleash the Entrepreneurs?

Working Papers Series - 2011/05When local interaction does not suffice: Sources of Firm Innovation in Urban Norwayby Rune Dahl Fitjar and Andrés Rodríguez-Posehttp://repec.imdea.org/pdf/imdea-wp2011-05.pdf

The Spanish ModelIsidro López & Emmanuel RodríguezNew Left Review 69, May-June 2011http://www.newleftreview.org/?view=2895

What the next Prime Minister of Spain should do for Entrepreneurshttp://www.entrepreneurcountry.net/Joe HaslamSeptember 2011

The Competivive Advantage of Nations: Its not about Clusters, its about Nodeshttp://www.entrepreneurcountry.net/Joe HaslamNovember 2011

El 'mix' perfecto para una empresa: Españoles por el mundo y extranjeros en EspañaJoe Haslam 19/10/2010El Confidencialhttp://goo.gl/JDRsn

Appendix

Míle Buíochas/ Thank you

Joe HaslamLives in: Madrid, Spain

joehas@gmail.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/joehashttp://twitter.com/joehas

"Everyone lives by selling something"Robert Louis Stevenson (1850-1894)