The Replicability of the Technological & IT Sector Model of Silicon Dissertation

The Replicability of the Technological & IT Sector Model of Silicon Valley, USA in the City of Birmingham, UK - Dissertation Example The paper presents the Silicon Valley, popular section of northern California just south of San Francisco Bay which has an extremely high concentration of hi-tech research centres and offices of the largest innovative companies in the world. Silicon Valley represents the hub of America's innovation sector. It has a global reach and is the concentration of the best brains in the IT and technology industry. However, in spite of the extremely high concentration of minds and capital in Silicon Valley, it came from very modest beginnings. Lee recalls that two classmates began a major electronic device manufacturing company from a one-car garage and six decades later, in 1999 the company, then known as Hewlett-Packard led Silicon Valley in revenue with $47.1 billion. Yahoo, another brand with its operations in Silicon Valley had a market capitalization of $70 billion in 1999. Silicon Valley is a leader in the technology and innovation industry. The following hi-tech hardware and software have companies that have their primary operations located in Silicon Valley: 1. Integrated Circuits (Intel) 2. Personal Computers (Apple) 3. Work Stations (HP, Sun Microsystems) 4. 3D Graphics (Silicon Graphics) 5. Database Software (Oracle) 6. Network Computing (3Com, Cisco Systems) 7. Internet (Excite, Yahoo, Ebay & PayPal). In terms of output, each worker at Silicon Valley accounted for $115,000 in 1999 and this represented 30% higher output per head than the average in the United States. (Lee 2000). Also, Venture Capitalists invested $13 billion in Silicon Valley alone in 1999 representing a third of all venture capital investments in America (Lee, 2000). Ironically, Silicon Valley was just a piece of agricultural land in the Southwest of America a century ago (Shueh & Wyman, 2009). This therefore shows that any fallow land could potentially be rebuilt to become like Silicon Valley, provided some important facts exist. This forms the crux of this research. Research is a quest to acquire knowledge on a given topic through the use of systematic tools and techniques (Kothari, 2005). This research is therefore initiated to answer important questions about how and why Silicon Valley developed into a multi-billion dollar concentration of top-notch research entities. The enquiry will therefore move further to identify the possibility of replicating the main initiators of the development of Silicon Valley in Birmingham, UK. It will seek to identify if the replication can be done and/or the role other significant factors are likely to play in the replicated model of Silicon Valley in Birmingham. Research Aim The research question will therefore be the assessment of the relevant factors that will be significant in the replication of the Silicon Valley Model in Birmingham, UK. In arriving at this end, the following objectives will have to be addressed: 1. An examination of the evolution of Silicon Valley USA and the identification of the roles of key stakeholders in the process. 2. A critical evaluation of how other replicas of Silicon Valley sprung up around the world. 3. An assessment of