Building High-Tech Clusters: Silicon Valley and Beyond

Ever since Silicon Valley emerged as a leading high-technology region a half-century ago, other cities, states, and nations have sought to duplicate its economic success. This valuable new collection addresses the question of how and why new high-tech clusters develop, bringing together thoughtful case studies of some prominent non-U.S. high-tech clusters with suggestive statistical analyses of public and private investments on U.S. regional markets. Leaving behind the irrational exuberance that marked many discussions of the subject during the Internet boom of the late 1990s, Building High-Tech Clusters reminds us that there is no magic formula for high-tech success and demonstrates that, in the words of the editors, "old-economy factors are crucial for new economy outcomes" (p. 357).

Rather than comparing nascent high-tech clusters with the fully grown Silicon Valley of today, the volume instead begins with a more historically grounded and dynamic approach, contrasting the Silicon Valley of the 1950s and 1960s with the newer high-tech clusters elsewhere in the world. As Silicon Valley pioneer Gordon Moore and co-author Kevin Davis argue in the first essay in the collection, this moment witnessed the creation of "a new and unique growth trajectory" in the area that, contrary to other...