Sleepy Hollow or Silicon Valley?
A few months ago, I caught up with a commercial lawyer in Brisbane, someone I have known for over 20 years and who has been very active in the SE Queensland Tech scene, including the Sunshine Coast.
I asked him if he was doing much business on the Sunshine Coast these days, and his response was: ‘The Sunshine Coast? Sleepy Hollow! I don't go there anymore.’
His perception of the Sunshine Coast certainly did not match the Silicon Valley aspiration that we may sometimes try to promote. I realised it can be difficult to shake off outdated perceptions of up-and-coming cities and regions.
I later found that Geelong in Victoria had also been tagged with the ‘Sleepy Hollow’ nickname from the Gold Rush days. Melbourne – a rival gold rush city - had mischievously promoted the Sleepy Hollow tag for Geelong to win more of the gold trade spoils. The nickname took a long while to shake and made a comeback in the 1980s and ‘90s when Geelong was experiencing an industrial decline.
It was not until the turn of the millennium that a derelict wasteland in Geelong was transformed into a waterfront precinct with major projects such as Deakin University and the Cunningham Pier development. The 11-hectare Pivot City waterfront development, an award-winning urban renewable project, is growing to house 50,000m2 workspaces across three unique Innovation Precincts. The Precinct includes a 1 Gbps Fibre Internet to all tenancies and is already home to over 50 organisations with over 1,000 onsite employees. Geelong is now one of the fastest-growing centres in Australia, and the Sleepy Hollow nickname has been largely put to rest.
The Sleepy Hollow tag is not valid for Geelong, the Sunshine Coast or many other areas working hard to diversify and update their economies.
Silicon Valley is unlikely to be the best model
I would also suggest that - at the other end of the economic spectrum - the ‘Silicon Valley’ tag - is also not a very useful or helpful comparison or aspiration for most regions.
Almost every week, I read about a city or region that says it wants to be – or will be - the Next Silicon Valley. I also see LinkedIn posts with photos of smiling businesspeople, students or community leaders heading to Silicon Valley to see what they can learn and find opportunities for themselves, their business, city or region. That is a good thing, Silicon Valley is the global epicentre for innovation, but it is not the only - or even the best - place to visit or learn from if you are trying to build a better future for your city or region.
Everywhere wants to be the next Silicon Valley
A quick Google search on the ‘Next Silicon Valley’ generates a long list of places all aspiring to be the Next Silicon Valley - just a few examples are Vietnam, Cuba and almost everywhere in Australia - including Melbourne, Western Sydney, Central/Eveleigh and Manly in Sydney, Adelaide, Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast, Cairns and Brisbane. Almost everywhere is in the race to be the Next Silicon Valley. But is this the right race to be in and even if it was, is it winnable?
Many of these places may not really mean that they are going to be the ‘Next Silicon Valley.’ They may simply be saying they want to be innovative high-tech hotspots and are using the Silicon Valley terminology loosely or to help generate media coverage.
Aiming to be an innovation hotspot is a great idea for many cities and regions but naively trying to mimic the Silicon Valley model is unlikely to succeed and can have unintended consequences and underplay the city or region’s natural advantages.
“Hundreds of regions all over the world collectively spent tens of billions of dollars trying to build their versions of Silicon Valley. I don’t know of a single success.”
Across the world, there is no shortage of Silicon Somethings – and we even have a group called Silicon Coast here on the Sunshine Coast, which is a great asset.
Asking ‘Which city will be the next Silicon Valley?’ is not useful as it implies that the Silicon Valley model can be replicated and is the best model for many of these up-and-coming cities worldwide to emulate.
Silicon Valley evolved many decades as a complex system influenced by history and culture, geography, climate, government spending on defence research, the contribution of key individuals, random events and meetings, key businesses, and their spinouts, the impact of Stanford University and other education institutes, networks, growth of investors, etc. – it was not master planned by government or anyone else.
“…. what made Silicon Valley was behaviour, mindset, and seeding the environment for an innovative system to emerge—(most) everything else came later, and there was no central plan to make it all happen.”
LEARN FROM MINDSET ETC, BOULDER
https://coloradosun.com/2018/12/04/give-first-techstars-colorado-gives-entrepreneurs-startups/
Be the best or next version of your city
Rather than asking how we can be the ‘Next Silicon Valley?’ it might be better to ask how we can be the best or next version of our city.
Thomas Friedman quote
· How we can be a relevant, dynamic, connected, 21st-century economy?’
· What assets, strengths and advantages does this city have to build upon?
· How to be inclusive and involve ambitious people and businesses of all ages and stages?
· How do we develop skills to help businesses grow?
We also need to look beyond just startups and acknowledge the importance of scaleups - businesses with at least 10 employees at the start of the recording period with an average annualised return of at least 20% in the past 3 years (OECD, 2007) - which is a neglected sector. Cities and regions would benefit from identifying these businesses, understanding their needs and supporting their growth.
There is a lot to learn from Silicon Valley, but I don’t think we should try to mimic it. Instead, cities and regions need to find their own thing to build upon and be great at.
As an example city region, the Sunshine Coast has many assets to build upon, including:
· The University of the Sunshine Coast opened in 1996 with 524 students, now has 17,846 students and is growing towards 35,000 students across several campuses; builds the region’s human capital, expertise and networks in key sectors and represents a source of future startup founders. Opportunities for colocation of collaborative university and industry R&D centres.
· A $5bn Health Precinct, provides up to 32,000m2 of dedicated health and medical space, research, allied health, consulting suites, residential accommodation and mixed-use facilities.
· Maroochydore CBD project
· Airport
· Submarine fibre cable with one of the fastest connections in Australia to Asia and the US, continued expansion of
Startups are critical for renewal and creating new employment opportunities, but the established business base is also critical, and efforts are needed to boost innovation in businesses at all stages and to invest in skills development to help businesses become technology-enabled and reach markets across the world. This is vital for cities and regions to survive and thrive in this dynamic economy.
time is really capitalise on those assets and you take the health present and there's relatively few health technology businesses that are based around there or interacting with the hospitals and so on so there's certainly an opportunity to much more in terms of encouraging businesses to benefit from that type of location but more importantly don't have to physically be there but benefit from the network and proximity and interaction with other people in that sector
another point to note to practically is that I've worked with alternative health tech companies ethics startups through some round programme with Ron hill we found that not just our startups but across Australia across the world most of those really successful high growth health technology startups the founder of finding team or health professionals fairly naturally they are surgeons they are nurses their doctors are physios their pharmacists etc so that people who really know that sector that industry and they know the problems for sun and they've got really deep knowledge and credibility in that field and even more importantly they know their way around that system in new through the right people talk to the right institutions are to approach so very poor so in the coast we have sunshine coast we have around 25,000 people working in health and social systems and one step we could do next is really begin to help people set self-identify and find the bonding potential entrepreneurs are there and help them along the way the bitter pathway to start in growing a successful health tech business topping end about level of talent that we have we have right here on the coast already in that sector so we've got tonnes of assets so these are some of the main things I guess we could have got to build on existing assets we've gotta get this more soft infrastructure developed further an I think also the point I put in this is that
We have a lot of great companies and they're not just start up so we have a lot of great established companies and some of those established companies are in very productive networks such as the third magnificence network fan and the manufacturing excellence forum cleantech sunshine coast and several key groups so within those groups lot of those established businesses are innovative they're doing pretty amazing things and so there's an opportunity again for us across the region to identify maybe the couple of thousands core businesses out of the 35,000 businesses we have I've got good potential to grow add value growth through innovation create exports across the world cell more across Australia hammer people including skill town the people at all other levels and really build that network so we've got a long journey ahead I like to think that Amazon uses phrase I like to think that every day is day one so we've got 20 years 40 years or more silicon Valley's got 100 years or more of track record you know we've got like sort of 2530 years of progress runs on the board from the starting the establishment of the University Hospital to some of the first startup companies such as type a file which command 2001 rules 5 and half million back then and still going strong award winning company and in publishing type of space so we've got a lot of these businesses that are already happening there already doing well.
We need to very much build upon those and also get create a network of these companies focusing on the leaders or some of these innovative established companies and startups I always go back to the UK prospective sacred appliques a lot time there and there are fantastic report by Nesta which was called the vital 6% and what that vital 6% showed was that just 6% of the business base was created in a very large study it was created over 50% of jobs so here in the sunshine coast other areas across street around the world we have 35,000 so businesses you take your 6% of that consider roughly 2000 businesses so we need to focus you know everybody needs to get a good shot to have pathways available for them including this 2000s absolute core innovative businesses innovative established businesses startups until we can to help them think
The final thought is that I would give us in developing a more modern dynamic economy we have to look we don't necessarily need to look at you know place like Silicon Valley or even place like Sidney they're very different places to us we look at ourselves and even places like boulder Co is good example and the idea of boulder Co is one of the things that will give first and so that's more of a culture Anna mentality that people kind of lookout for children helping children are positive and supportive open up their network say hey what can I do to help we certainly have a lot of that culture right here in the sunshine coast and my prediction is that culture alongside the amazing lifestyle so that we have here is going to be our absolute biggest about page in the long run including a modern dynamic economy thank you.
Colin Graham is the founder of Causeway Innovation and has coached 300+ startups and innovative SMEs.