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California Management Review | 1990

Regional Networks and the Resurgence of Silicon Valley

AnnaLee Saxenian

When Japanese competition forced the U.S. semiconductor industry into crisis during the mid-1980s, most observers predicted the demise of Silicon Valley. Yet the region9s economy is once again flourishing. By building on the dense networks of social relationships which were created and then abandoned by the established semiconductor firms, a new wave of semiconductor start-ups is creating a new Silicon Valley—one which fosters reciprocal innovation among networks of specialist producers. However, the Silicon Valley economy remains vulnerable. While today9s producers are better organized to respond to volatile markets and technologies than their predecessors, they have yet to recognize the social basis of their dynamism and create local institutions which allow them to respond systematically to shared challenges.


Research Policy | 1991

The Origins and Dynamics of Production Networks in Silicon Valley

AnnaLee Saxenian

Silicon Valley firms are coping with rising production costs and the constant demand for new products by relying on networks of suppliers from within the region and beyond.These long-term, trust-based partnerships blur the boundaries between the regions autonomous but interdependent firms. The results of longitudinal case studies with three Silicon Valley enterprises are presented. These include a contract manufacturer, a silicon foundry, and a joint product development.Based on fifty in-depth interviews with firm executives and managers conducted between 1988 and 1990, the case studies reveal the degree to which Silicon Valley owes its technological dynamism to the formalization of inter-firm networks.The United States economy would benefit from the institutionalization of inter-firm collaboration. (SAA)


Studies in Comparative International Development | 2005

From Brain Drain to Brain Circulation: Transnational Communities and Regional Upgrading in India and China

AnnaLee Saxenian

By 2000, over one-third of Silicon Valley’s high-skilled workers were foreign-born, and overwhelmingly from Asia. These U.S.-educated engineers are transforming developmental opportunities for formerly peripheral regions as they build professional and business connections to their home countries. In a process more akin to “brain circulation” than “brain drain,” these engineers and entrepreneurs, aided by the lowered transaction costs associated with digitization, are transferring technical and institutional know-how between distant regional economies faster and more flexibly than most large corporations. This article examines how Chinese- and Indian-born engineers are accelerating the development of the information technology industries in their home countries—initially by tapping the low-cost skill in their home countries, and over time by contributing to highly localized processes of entrepreneurial experimentation and upgrading, while maintain close ties to the technology and markets in Silicon Valley. However, these successful models also raise several questions about the broader relevance of brain circulation outside of several key countries, and regions of those countries, within the global South.


Industry and Innovation | 2002

Transnational communities and the evolution of global production networks : the cases of Taiwan, China, and India

AnnaLee Saxenian

Transnational entrepreneurs--US-educated immigrant engineers whose activities span national borders--are creating new economic opportunities for formerly peripheral economies around the world. As talented immigrants who have studied and worked in the USA return to their home countries to take advantage of promising new economic opportunities they are building technical communities that link regions in the developing world to the leading centers of information and communications technologies in the USA. This paper examines the cases of Taiwan, India and China to suggest that these transnational entrepreneurs and their communities provide a significant mechanism for the international diffusion of knowledge and the creation and upgrading of local capabilities--one that is distinct from, but complementary to, global production networks.


Economic Development Quarterly | 2002

Silicon Valley’s New Immigrant High-Growth Entrepreneurs

AnnaLee Saxenian

This article examines the economic contributions of skilled Asian immigrants in Silicon Valley—both directly, as entrepreneurs, and indirectly, as facilitators of trade with and investment in their countries of origin. Skilled immigrants account for one third of the region’s engineering workforce and are increasingly visible as entrepreneurs and investors. Two thirds of the region’s foreign-born engineers were from Asia. Chinese and Indian immigrants in turn accounted for 74% of the total Asian-born engineering workforce. In 1998, Chinese and Indian engineers were senior executives at one quarter of Silicon Valley’s technology businesses. These immigrant-run companies collectively accounted for more than


The Brookings Review | 2002

Brain Circulation: How High-Skill Immigration Makes Everyone Better Off

AnnaLee Saxenian

26.8 billion in sales and 58,282 jobs. The region’s most successful immigrant entrepreneurs rely heavily on ethnic resources while integrating into the mainstream technology economy. The challenge for policy makers will be to recognize these mutually beneficial connections between immigration, investment, trade, and economic development.


Environment and Planning A | 2000

The limits of guanxi capitalism: transnational collaboration between Taiwan and the USA

Jinn-Yuh Hsu; AnnaLee Saxenian

Silicon Valleys workforce is among the worlds most ethnically diverse. Not only do Asian and Hispanic workers dominate the low-paying, blue-collar workforce, but foreign-born scientists and engineers are increasingly visible as entrepreneurs and senior management. More than a quarter of Silicon Valleys highly skilled workers are immigrants, including tens of thousands from lands as diverse as China, Taiwan, India, the United Kingdom, Iran, Vietnam, the Philippines, Canada, and Israel.


Economic Geography | 2009

Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography Venture Capital in the "Periphery": The New Argonauts, Global Search, and Local Institution Building

AnnaLee Saxenian; Charles F. Sabel

In this research we explore the relationship between high-technology regional development and ethnic networks in the connection between Silicon Valley, California and Hsinchu, Taiwan. We elaborate the argument that regional industrial structure and embedded social networks, rather than the multinational firm, should be the focus in the study of transnational business. The complementary regional industrial structures allow economic and technological collaboration between these two regions while the social networks help coordinate these transnational (cross-regional) collaborations. However, we seek to distinguish this account from the dominant perceptions of the role of guanxi (interpersonal relationships) in overseas Chinese business networks (OCBN). In contrast with the arguments for OCBN, that guanxi provides resources for Chinese firms to coordinate and control transnational business, we argue that the skill and competence required for technological upgrading are not necessarily guaranteed within the ethnic network. Although ethnic networks facilitate transnational business and technology cross-fertilization, it seems go too far to argue the Silicon Valley–Hsinchu connection is another version of Chinese guanxi capitalism.


Economy and Society | 1989

The Cheshire cat's grin: innovation, regional development and the Cambridge case

AnnaLee Saxenian

abstract This article examines the growing importance of global, or external, search networks that firms and other actors rely on to locate collaborators who can solve part of a problem they face or require part of a solution they may be able provide. We focus on the creation in emerging economies of venture capital—an institution that is organized to search systematically for, and foster the development of, firms and industries that can, in turn, collaborate in codesign. The article examines the case of Taiwan, where first-generation immigrant professionals from U.S. technology industries have collaborated with their home-country counterparts to develop the context for entrepreneurial development. It refers to the members of these networks as the new Argonauts, an allusion to the ancient Greek Jason and the Argonauts, who searched for the Golden Fleece. We also argue that the most significant contributions of these skilled professionals to their home countries are not direct transfers of technology or knowledge, but participation in external search and domestic institutional reform. The new Argonauts are ideally positioned to search beyond prevailing routines to identify opportunities for complementary “peripheral” participation in the global economy and to work with public officials to adapt and redesign relevant institutions and firms in their native countries. They are, therefore, exemplary protagonists of “self-discovery”—the process by which an enterprise or entrepreneur determines which markets it can serve—and of a microlevel institutional reform that can, diffusing and cascading, ultimately produce wider structural transformations.


Economy and Society | 1989

In search of power: the organization of business interests in Silicon Valley and Route 128

AnnaLee Saxenian

The prevailing approach to high-tech regions locates the determinants of growth in attributes of the regional environment. The case of Cambridge, England is used to illustrate the weaknesses of thi...

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Ben A. Rissing

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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Jinn-Yuh Hsu

National Taiwan University

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