ABSTRACT
In order to understand and explain Silicon Valley’s long-standing performance as a global engine of innovation, entrepreneurship, and startups, I developed a model that stresses the interrelatedness of cultural and institutional factors at the micro, meso, and macro level of this high-tech region (Ester & Maas 2016: 29-41). I define Silicon Valley as a well-integrated and balanced ecosystem in which all constituting elements are lined up to promote and sustain leading-edge innovation and pioneering entrepreneurship. It is an almost organic and prototypical system that generates an enduring and resilient habitat for innovation and startups to thrive (Munroe 2009). The Valley is an environment that is built on the right cultural mindset and resource availability, which encourages and strengthens innovation and the founding of new ventures. Above all, it is an environment that stimulates a pro-innovation and entrepreneurial way of thinking that helps the creation of new businesses through a well-oiled network providing access to talent, knowledge, funding, mentoring, and legal counseling, and to accelerators. In the words of John-Seeley-Brown, the former chief scientist of Xerox, Silicon Valley is an ecosystem in which the different parts reinforce one another to create a “perpetual innovation machine”. 24 It is an ecosystem that favors competition, disruptive thinking, and excellence and that supports startup teams to work on their dreams and to market their new business ideas. It is a habitat that fuels the fast growth of existing companies and has led to a booming startup economy that many other regions in the world are eager to learn from.
