Biz Features

How Does Seattle and the Rest of the World Compare to Silicon Valley?

by . August 14th, 2015

Silicon Valley looms large over the rest of the world’s tech entrepreneurship centers. Only one other place can give it a run for its money.

Not too long ago, Geekwire and Killer Infographics teamed up to celebrate the former’s first anniversary. The infographic below was printed and handed to attendees at the event, so if you have a copy, hang on to it and see how well it ages in a few years.

Here’s a light-hearted look at real and imagined differences between Silicon Valley and Seattle geeks.

valleyvseattle
source


How do you recreate Silicon Valley?


To be truthful, the Seattle vs. Silicon Valley dichotomy is silly through and through. There can only be one “Silicon Valley” as it stands. Few of the other centers we’ll mention later are even close to duplicating its success, except perhaps for Israel’s Silicon Wadi and China’s Zhongguancun.

However, other areas of the world have duplicated some of Silicon Valley’s successes simply by having the right ingredients to begin with or outright copying them.

These ingredients include:

  • Significant local demand for specific tech and services.
  • A culture that encourages knowledge acquisition and entrepreneurship and accepts failure as necessary learning.
  • A global market mindset.
  • A geographically close network of universities and other research centers allows glimpses into the future as well as networking.
  • Enough disposable income to encourage local venture capitalist investment.
  • The RIGHT kind of government support, with relatively low regulation, no direct meddling in decisions, and attractive incentives.
  • Straightforward incorporation and liquidation laws.

A few other areas in the world known for tech entrepreneurship:


 South Korea

Taiwan

Israel

China

Hong Kong

United Kingdom

Germany

India

Other notable tech entrepreneurship zones

Tell us what places we missed and why we were wrong to leave them out in the comments below! 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Arthur Piccio manages YouTheEntrepreneur and has managed content for major players in the online printing industry. He was previously BizSugar's contributor of the week. His work has appeared multiple times on The New York Times' You're the Boss Small Business Blog. He enjoys guitar maintenance and reading up on history and psychology in his spare time.