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This paper explores the origins of the Silicon Valley model for regional economic development, and attempts to deploy this model elsewhere in the United States and abroad. Frederick Terman, Stanford's provost, first envisioned its unique partnership of academia and industry, and trained the first generation of students who effected it. He patiently cultivated an aggressively entrepreneurial culture in what he called "the newly emerging community of technical scholars." Beginning in the 1960s, business groups elsewhere set out to build their own versions of Silicon Valley, some enlisting the assistance of Terman and his proteges. After discussing the emergence of the Stanford-Silicon Valley effort, the paper examines in detail the New Jersey Institute of Science and Technology, an effort led by Bell Laboratories; the Graduate Research Center of the Southwest and the SMU Foundaton for Science and Engineering in Dallas, Texas; and the Korea Advanced Insitute of Science and Technology, Terman's last and arguably most successful attempt. The paper discusses the reasons for the difficulties in creating new versions, and suggests explanations for the apparent success of the Korean experiment.
If anyone deserved to be called "the father of Silicon Valley," it was Frederick Terman. As Stanford University professor, dean of engineering and provost, it was Terman who first envisioned Silicon Valley's unique partnership of academia and industry and trained the first generation of students who made it happen. Long before journalists named it-for the primary component in microelectronicsTerman's efforts to encourage the growth of high technology industry around Stanford had attracted national and international attention. Charles de Gaulle saw an exhibit on the Stanford Industrial Park at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair and insisted on making a pilgrimage there himself to uncover its secrets.1 So would many other politicians, policy makers, businessmen, and venture capitalists, all eager to learn its lessons and employ them to capitalize on what seemed to be limitless opportunities in science-related growth industries.
In the fall of 1963, Colorado's public universities co-sponsored a national conference on "the new technological revolution" and its implications for state economic development. How could emerging states like Colorado, Governor John A. Love asked in his keynote address, compete in the high stakes world of high technology? What could they learn from the experiences of the...