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      Rethinking Silicon Valley: New Perspectives on Regional Development

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            Abstract

            Silicon Valley in Southern California has, over the past 30 years, become a model for high technology development in many parts of the world. Associated with Silicon Valley is a common rhetoric and mythology that explains the origins of this area of high technology agglomeration and indeed the business and entrepreneurial attributes needed for success. Governments in many parts of the world (including Southeast Asia and Australia) have tried to emulate this growth through various industry and regional development mechanisms, in particular, the science or technology park. More recently, promoting developments in information technology has come to be seen as an integral feature of these parks' activities. In this paper, we argue that the modeling process used by governments to promote Silicon Valley-like regional development has tended to model the wrong things about Silicon Valley. The models have tended to be mechanical and have failed to reflect the nature of information and information industries. While we have not sought to develop a model for Silicon Valley in this paper,we address a number of issues that require attention on the part of anyone serious about this project. After discussing problems with previous attempts to model Silicon Valley and problems associated with the activity of modeling itself, we move to consider four issues that must be addressed in any real attempt to model Silicon Valley in Southeast Asia. The first is the role of the state and the problems that state involvement may create. The second concerns the contribution that universities can make to the project. The third is the role of firms, particularly Chinese firms. The fourth is the cultural context within which the 'model' will sit. Since technology parks are seen as a popular way of promoting high technology development by governments, the revised history suggested in this paper provides fresh thinking about modeling Silicon Valley in the Southeast Asian region.

            Content

            Author and article information

            Journal
            cpro20
            CPRO
            Prometheus
            Critical Studies in Innovation
            Pluto Journals
            0810-9028
            1470-1030
            December 2001
            : 19
            : 4
            : 377-393
            Article
            10032435 Prometheus, Vol. 19, No. 4, December 2001, pp. 377-393
            10.1080/08109020110091431
            dffd7769-1c5b-4aba-b108-0d07ed01a06f
            Copyright Taylor & Francis Group, LLC

            All content is freely available without charge to users or their institutions. Users are allowed to read, download, copy, distribute, print, search, or link to the full texts of the articles in this journal without asking prior permission of the publisher or the author. Articles published in the journal are distributed under a http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

            History
            Page count
            Figures: 0, Tables: 0, References: 44, Pages: 17
            Categories
            Original Articles

            Computer science,Arts,Social & Behavioral Sciences,Law,History,Economics

            References

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