One of the blogs I track that makes me think a bit is Web Worker Daily. In a post How to succeed for tech entrepreneurs – stroll down University Avenue? the question is raised of whether it’s useful for an entrepreneur to have a presence in a hig…

Online-only business relationships can and do work, now more than ever. Energy is energy…people can drain you, just as easily as they inspire.

Face-to-face is another layer of communication that is either feasible or it’s not. It doesn’t have to be a given. And the lack of face-to-face doesn’t have to mean failure.

In the past however, when we were working for the same dotcom (iwin.com) and had our desk chairs back to back, there was the creation of an energy of synergy. When one of us could simply look over the shoulder at the other guy’s screen, or roll backwards bumping into him in order to grab all of his attention to focus on something or another, that was developing that environment that allowed for magical things to get created.

As much as I appreciate being able to work from home, not having to travel daily to an office, etc., I do miss not having those direct contact interactions. I don’t believe there will ever be a technology created that will replace this. But then, that’s just me!

Ricardo: “there will be a broadening of the innovation hubs, since the solutions marketed my companies will be made by knowledge produced in a growing number of different locations, transferring the economic preeminence of one location to a network of several locations.”

And maybe that’s an expression of how a hybrid looks. Thanks for the feedback.

In the rest of the country there is stuff happening everywhere and its difficult to get a handle on what’s going on. I’m surprised everyday when I find out about new startups here in the midwest that are doing things that would be mainstream news if they were located in the valley.

Now for the shameless plug… If people are interested in whats going on outside the coastal hubs, I just launched http://GeekHeartland.com to cover landlocked and non-hub technology and entrepreneurial activity. Check it out and subscribe to stay updated on the “rest of the tech world”.

“As a geographer and now doing a Masters on Science, Technology and Innovation, this topic of “When it comes to innovation, geography is destiny!” resonates in me every time.

The fact is that we need to see this in the long term perspective. In this sense, the economic preeminence of a certain location (city, region or country) is clearly shrinking in terms of time.

Sure Silicon Valley (SV) has a distinctive advantage, but that advantage is not technological as some people might argue, it is mostly cultural – i.e. the culture of risk and the venture capital industry, which dynamically reinforce each other. That translates into something Om pointed in relation to what Vinnie Mirchandani said “commercializing innovations is where the big pay back is”.

And even this distinctive advantage is being emulated by other places, and Om you hit the spot when you highlighted the case of Nokia.
No one thought that a country with no record on scoring innovations would become the birthplace of the companies that massified cellphones or VOIP.

One of the best books that describe this new paradigm shift is “From Global to Metanational: How Companies Win in the Knowledge Economy” from a trio of INSEAD professors

What we can draw from the book is that the economy is now both global and knowledge-based, and that the knowledge needed for a company to succeed is not anymore seeded in one place, but it is scattered through the world.
Albeit you can say that with ICT you or your company don’t need to migrate your operations to these locations, think again because the most valuable knowledge are sophisticated, hard to learn and hard to move – what you need is co-location.

Forget all that fanfare about “The World is Flat” and all that fuss about the death of geography. Understand this: geography is not distance!

One of the most important “bricks” of the this global knowledge-based economy are the highly skilled professionals that travel around SV and the other innovation hubs around the world.

The first person to saw the importance of this people was Annalee Saxenian (professor at Berkeley), especially in the form of immigrant entrepreneurs that helped forge some hubs like Bangalore (India) or Hsinchu (Taiwan)

Their role on accelerating development of countries, regions and cities is so evident that even the World Bank created a initiative called “Diasporas of Highly Skilled and Migration of Talent”.

More than a brain drain movement towards SV or its demise because of entrepreneurs’ return of to their home countries, the overall trend is what is called brain circulation – moving between hubs in face of opportunities in a daily, monthly and annually basis.

To sum, there will be a broadening of the innovation hubs, since the solutions marketed my companies will be made by knowledge produced in a growing number of different locations, transferring the economic preeminence of one location to a network of several locations.

And how do you know, anyway, that your investment in an apartment in Palo Alto will do better for you than what you could have done virtually if you gave it the same attention? You aren’t exactly the heaviest user of social tools online! ;)