Characteristics of Successful Tech Hubs and Start-ups: Lessons for Engineers

(NOTE: This event is only open to SJSU students, faculty and staff.)
Silicon Valley is commonly acknowledged as the tech capital of the world. How did Silicon Valley come into being, and what can we learn for our own careers? The story goes back to local Hams trying to break RCA's tube patents, Stanford "angel" investors, the sinking of the Titanic, WW II and radar, and the SF Bay Area infrastructure that developed –these factors pretty much determined that the semiconductor and IC industries would be located in the Santa Clara Valley, and that the Valley would remain the world’s innovation center as new technologies emerge –digital, then software, biotech, VR, autonomous vehicles, artificial intelligence, LLMs –and be the model for innovation worldwide.
This talk will give an exciting and colorful history of development and innovation that began in Palo Alto in 1909. You'll meet some of the colorful characters –Cyril Elwell, Lee De Forest, Bill Eitel, Charles Litton, Fred Terman, David Packard, Bill Hewlett, Bill Shockley and others –who came to define our worldwide electronics industries through their inventions and process development. You'll understand some of the novel management approaches that have become the hallmarks of its tech startups. In this talk, the key Silicon Valley attributes will be illustrated and analyzed, for consideration by engineers interested in creating their own start-ups and high-tech businesses, working for them, or simply understanding them.
Speaker(s): Paul Wesling,
San Jose State Unversity, San Jose, California, United States, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/545434