The pay-it-forward culture: a tradition of mentorship in Silicon Valley. Reprinted from SteveBlank.com.
See the original post here. By Steve Blank (Steve Jobs and Robert Noyce in picture on left) Foreign visitors to Silicon Valley continually mention how willing we are to help, network and connect strangers. We take it so for granted we never even to bother to talk about it. We’re all in this together – The Chips are Down In 1962 Walker’s Wagon Wheel Bar/Restaurant in Mountain View became the lunch hangout for employees at Fairchild Semiconductor.
We’re all in this together – A Computer in every Home In 1975 a local set of hobbyists with the then crazy idea of a computer in every home formed the Homebrew Computer Club and met in Menlo Park at the Peninsula School then later at the Stanford AI Lab. We’re all in this together – Helping Our Own Until the 1980’s Chinese and Indian engineers ran into a glass ceiling in large technology companies held back by the belief that “they make great engineers but can’t be the CEO.” The entrepreneur was Steve Jobs. KPCB Internet Trends (2011) Dropbox: The Inside Story Of Tech's Hottest Startup. Steve Jobs’ death reminds Silicon Valley that it needs to remember its history. Silicon Valley isn’t a place with a long memory.
There are plenty of people who migrate here in search of wealth, without knowing much about its history. To them, only the newest technology is important, not the stuff of the past. They race ahead from one bubble to the next, oblivious to the fact that there are such things as boom-and-bust cycles. But the death of Steve Jobs is a reminder that history matters. We haven’t had to deal with the loss of many of the valley’s iconic leaders because they are still living. This occasion makes it a good time to reflect on and learn our history, because we’ll need it to figure out where to go. Jobs himself felt the tug of history. “Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards,” Jobs said. I am reminded of how hard it is for places like the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, Calif., to collect artifacts of computer history.
The Man Who Inspired Jobs - NYTimes.com. The Top Ten Lessons Steve Jobs Taught Us. 10 elements of entrepreneurship. Strategy and entrepreneurship Facts inc: small business, big numbers.
The elements of the entrepreneurial periodic table are diverse and demanding – perseverance, vision, confidence, optimism and much more. Ten elements of entrepreneurship 01 Only 39% of entrepreneurial businesses have a ‘very good idea’ of their competitors’ business. -- Deloitte Entrepreneurship UK 2009 Report 02 A latent pool of hidden innovators (over 50s, ethnic minorities, the disabled) could potentially add £15 billion to the UK economy by 2012 if the right conditions were created. -- Cass Business School Centre for New Technologies, Innovation and Entrepreneurship. 03 There are around 4.8 million private sector enterprises in the UK, employing 22.8 million people with an estimated combined annual turnover of £3,200 billion. -- 04Small and medium-sized enterprises together account for 99.9% of all UK enterprises, 59.8% of private sector employment and 49% of private sector turnover. -- -- -- --