There’s an interesting post on the Harvard Business Review blog site by the founder of the Startup Genome project, which analyzes success/failure in new enterprises. He titles it: “Reversing the Decline in Big Ideas”. (See http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2012/07/reversing_the_decline_in_big_i.html)
He notes that there seems to be a lack of big new ideas in the tech industry and suggests that this is because there is not enough diversity in the founding teams of new enterprises.
In a recent presentation, I noted that we’ve learned about the importance of cross-pollination among disciplines for true innovation. And then I made the point that many of the “innovation clusters” planned by governments instead aim to drill down into one very focused domain of knowledge – which might mean they won’t get the innovation they expect.
The author’s argument about the homogenous nature of Silicon Valley startups is perhaps another example of this pattern. All of those public officials who have dreams of duplicating the past success of Silicon Valley should take note.
© 2012 Norman Jacknis on July 31, 2012
[http://njacknis.tumblr.com/post/28409866759/diversity-and-innovation/]