Harvard/Duke/UC Berkeley researcher Vivek Wadhwa — he’s dangerously close to surrounding the entire country with his teaching posts — has told the Boston/Route 128 community what he thinks of its old, cranky behind.
Wadhwa, who caused a stink awhile back when he dared to look askance at some NVCA numbers, says Silicon Valley took a commanding lead in the ’90s with its job-hopping, information sharing, networking, etc.
Which brings me to Boston. Ever heard of Route 128? To my surprise, neither have any of my students at Duke or the entrepreneurs I’ve met in Silicon Valley.
…
This organizational mechanism was in sharp contrast to that of Route 128. Dominated by large, vertically integrated, and secretive minicomputer producers such as DEC, Wang, Prime, and Data General. Technology, skill, and know-how were trapped within the boundaries of the large corporations.
Oh … snap. I like the idea of the Boston area tech executive as a collection of C. Montgomery Burnses, and look forward to their withering retorts via telegraph.
Posted by Brendan Lynch
Tags: Data General, DEC, Monty Burns, NVCA, Route 128, Vivek Wadhwa, Wang
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There does seem to be this somewhat widely propagated (mis)perception … that our community of tech execs are all Mr. Burneses …
Even while people outside Boston continue to argue the merits of a free-wheeling Silicon Valley culture of entrepreneurship over a supposedly stodgy east coast, this region remains the source of breakthrough ideas and continues to spawn interesting new start-ups.
Perhaps Mr. Wadhwa should spend some significant time in the Boston/Rte 128 region before echoing what others before him have written about Silicon Valley and the Boston/Rte 128 tech communities. A visit to Kendall Square wouldn’t hurt …
Here’s the summary of a recent study that shows the regional impact of start-ups in this geography.
http://www.kauffman.org/uploadedFiles/MIT_impact_brief_021709.pdf
[...] not a direct response to Vivek Wadhwa’s Boston = No. 2 post on TechCrunch the other day, but Jeff Bussgang offers up a nice counterpoint on his blog [...]