Signum sine tinnitu is the blog formerly known as “Let The Good Times Roll”. It’s the blog of a fella named Guy Kawasaki whose written a number of Best Selling books on business in the Information Technology age. Click here for the list on Amazon
It’s one of my daily reads from my dozens of RSS feeds that I scan. What drew me to it? Well, I’m more of a logical person who realizes I struggle in the area of presentation and layout and he deals with that sort of thing for a living. Also, the title area of his blog had probably one of the most funny and poignant statements about blogging I’ve ever read:
“Blogger. n. Someone with nothing to say writing for someone with nothing to do.”
A particularly interesting article was one that he titled “How To Kick Silicon Valley’s Butt” that published last week. I found the article particularly timely given the massive change in our community that will be brought by the Biotech Campus in Kannapolis. He split up the article into three sections: “Stuff You Can’t Do Jack About”, “Stuff You Can Do Jack About”, “Stuff You Shouldn’t Do Jack About”.
Among the things “you can’t do jack about”: “Beautiful, but not gorgeous, surroundings”; “Cities, crowds, and high- if not over- population”; and “High housing prices”…yes, he says this is a good thing - check out the logic:
If houses are cheap, it means that young people can buy housing sooner and have kids. When they have kids, they can’t take as much risk and don’t have as much energy to start companies. (I have four kids-I barely have the time and energy to blog, much less start a company.) Also, if houses are cheap, it’s easier to “make it big,” and you want it to be hard to make it big.
Interesting to say the least. And how about the things “you can do jack about”…among those in his list are “Encourage Immigration”, “Don’t pat yourself on the back too soon”, and, my favorite, “Focus on educating engineers”. Here’s more on that:
The most important thing you can do is establish a world-class school of engineering. Engineering schools beget engineers. Engineers beget ideas. And ideas beget companies. End of discussion.
If I had to point to the single biggest reason for Silicon Valley’s existence, it would be Stanford University - specifically, the School of Engineering. Business schools are not of primary importance because MBAs seldom sit around discussing how to change the world with great products. Mostly they care about how to get interviews at multi-nationals and consulting firms. As my mother used to say, “Best case, engineers give buildings. Best case, MBAs endow chairs.”
On a tactical level, this means that aspiring regions should raid the best engineering schools. What do associate professors at Stanford, MIT, and Carnegie Mellon make? Whatever it is, offer them double the amount to move. Be clever: how hard could it be to recruit top flight faculty to move to your beautiful (but not gorgeous) region if you conduct interviews at MIT in the winter? This is a trivial expense compared to the various incubator, tax treatment, and venture capital fund formation schemes that are the usual solutions to the challenge.
Now, what “shouldn’t you do jack about”. The list is interesting, here are a few points, “Don’t create a venture capital fund”, “Don’t pass a special tax exemption”, and, pertinent to this area, “Don’t focus on ‘creating jobs’” More on that:
When a region adds the second bottom line of creating jobs, things get whacky. Such a goal perverts the objective of a startup because the primary, perhaps the sole, goal of a startup is to kick ass. If it also has to create jobs for the sake of creating jobs, then you defocus it. The thinking should be: ‘If this company kicks ass, then it will survive and grow. If it survives and grows then it will create jobs.’ So let startups focus on kicking ass and the jobs will come naturally-or not.
This was just a small part of the article, and I can’t say I wholeheartedly agree with all of it; but it’s the first article on the matter of public policy in economic development that I felt was thought-provoking without trying to sign someone on to a particular political ideology.
Having worked for a Silicon Valley Company for almost 10 years - I can tell you they have their issues; but no area attracts as many entrepreneurs. It is my humble opinion that this should be required reading for anyone who is, has ever been, or intends to ever be on the ballot for anything in Cabarrus County.
CLICK HERE TO READ THE REMAINDER OF THE ARTICLE
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