New Industrial Cities? The Four Faces of Silicon Valley

Mia Gray, Elyse Golob, Ann Markusen and Sam Ock Park
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Mia Gray: Department of Geography, University of Cambridge, Downing Place, Cambridge CB2 3EN, United Kingdom
Elyse Golob: Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, 33 Livingston Avenue, Suite 500, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1983
Ann Markusen: Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, 33 Livingston Avenue, Suite 500, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1983
Sam Ock Park: Project on Regional and Industrial Economics, 33 Livingston Avenue, Suite 500, New Brunswick, NJ 08901-1983

Review of Radical Political Economics, 1998, vol. 30, issue 4, 1-28

Abstract: Silicon Valley has been admired and much emulated as an American version of a new industrial district based on its heavily networked, small-firm, innovative electronics sector. This industrial structure has been argued to give the region a uniquely cooperative, flexible, and dynamic structure. Based on field research and data analysis, we argue that Silicon Valley's success and culture owes much to the presence and success of large organizations-its defense industrial complex, its headquarters and high-tech branch operations of large domestic firms, and the recent entry of foreign firm operations. Relationships among these large organizations are more often characterized by competitive, arm's length relationships, market power imbalance, cooperation with organizations external to the district, and relatively low levels of interorganizational mobility of personnel. These relationships undermine the cooperation, innovation, and governance conditions celebrated by the new industrial districts scholars. Furthermore, their modus operandi tends to raise the regional cost of doing business and exacerbates centrifugal tendencies in corporate location and dualism in income distribution. Silicon Valley may not be as easy to replicate as many have assumed, nor does it deserve unalloyed high marks as a regional prototype.

Date: 1998
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