Can America Afford Innovation?

In USA the discussion on the disappearance of the middle class is ongoing, but also in Europe and other developed nations many people looking forward to the impact of new technologies warn about this possible trend of disappearance of middle-income jobs. In an article in Slate, Matthew Yglesias analysis the feed-back that would have to innovation. How can you continue to innovate if there are only low-paid and very high paid jobs? Who will do the research/development/innovation? Read the article here

How to be Silicon Valley?

An old blog-post, but still relevant. Angel investor Paul Graham wrote 7 years ago about what to do to become like Silicon Valley. He summarizes you need rich people and nerds. And to have nerds, you need a strong university system, urban density and a cool factor through a strong cultural life (resembles Richard Florida's 3Ts somehow). His full length blog can be found here Some more interesting quotes from the blog: "Bureaucrats by their nature are the exact opposite sort of people from startup investors. The idea of them making startup investments is comic. It would be like mathematicians running Vogue-- or perhaps more accurately, Vogue editors running a math journal." "An article about Sophia Antipolis bragged that companies there included Cisco, Compaq, IBM, NCR, and Nortel. Don't the French realize these aren't startups?" "If you go to see Silicon Valley, what you'll see are buildings. But it's the people that make it Silicon Valley, not the buildings. I read occasionally about attempts to set up "technology parks" in other places, as if the active ingredient of Silicon Valley were the office space."