How long can the US stay on top of the tech heap?
Published: 01 Jun 2005 11:45 BST
What does the US need to do to?
I think several things. Let me spin an analogy for you. Once upon a time, most of the chemical engineering world — drugs and industrial chemicals — was dominated by labs and inventors and smart people that were coming out of Switzerland and Germany. If you look back at that history of the pharma industry and the chemicals industry, you'll find that that part of the world really dominated.
Over time, of course, those same companies and the industry proliferated around the world, and I think that's been a good thing for mankind. The winners [are] those that learned to straddle and harness those global markets. If you look at the influence in relative ownership and wealth creation within those industries, you still find a disproportionate amount of it flowing back to Switzerland and Germany. You don't see all the labs there. You still see significant research being done there, but over time it goes to where it needs to go from a talent, cost and market point of view.
The same exact thing is happening in the electronics industry right now. Open environments, open countries, lower barriers to commerce and to information is creating a global opportunity for electronics and anybody that [invests] in the education and the training and the R&D that it takes to be competitive.
So what does the US need to do to make sure that it continues to be the leader and not lose that capability?
[The US needs] need to make sure that Silicon Valley in this particular case, or the United States more broadly, continues to be a destination for anyone on the planet that wants to be involved in the industry. Why [is the US] a destination? Well, because [it has] the best universities, because it's a good place to live, because [it still has] a very important market that drives a lot of the revenue. It's all the obvious things. [The US] cannot hope to monopolise chip design and chip manufacturing the way [it] once did, but [the US] can hope to continue to influence it on a global scale and leverage it on a global scale.
If [US firms] learn to play the global game and continue to make this the most important node where people come to work, to get experience, to get educated, some significant fraction of those who do that will want to stay here and live here and start their companies from here.
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