Stanford University President John L. Hennessy spoke with BusinessWeek Silicon Valley Correspondent Jim Kerstetter about the Valley and the nature of innovation. The Valley, he says, still represents an area of critical mass in terms of innovation, an area that supports new business concepts as well as new technologies. But, increasing competition comes from outside the U.S., Bangalore, India, in software, and China in hardware. Those areas are both partners and competitors, as it happens with other regions of US, Texas or North Carolina.
The geographic distribution of innovation is a challenge to manage, even within companies, but the Digital Age offers some ways of solving this problem. It is difficult coordinating multiple sites, but this is becoming a requirement for success. Management structures have to change in order to be flexible enough to make these kinds of distributed organizations work well.
Source and more: Business Week, New Terrain for Silicon Valley
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/nov2004/nf20041129_8093_db083.htm?chan=adsections&sub=innovation&campaign_id=knw_cisco