Sunday, February 22, 2009

Do Tokyo dreams of Silicon Valley?

The following topic is quite interesting.

Where do you think is the next Silicon Valley?

There are similar technology hubs, such as Bangalore in India and Zhongguancun in China.
I guess, there is a good possibility that Tokyo will be the tech hub. A list of pro and con is;

Pros

  • Educational institute (e.g. Tokyo Univ. )
  • High-speed networks. Not only 1Gbps optic cables, but 2.3Mbps mobile infrastructure
  • Compliance of Intellectual Property
  • A cost of hiring. It's cheaper than Silicon Valley.
Cons
  • English, English, and English. It's mandatory.
In my mind, there is no need to create Tokyo Silicon Valley physically. I mean, a source of SV is engineer's network and a sense of tech relevancy. (Venture capitals are important players, but I put aside it purposely.) These sources are getting shift into Web through useful web services, such as SNS, wiki, etc. I wonder, this trend could be Web Silicon Valley.

Japanese engineers has skills, but they has lost the sense. So a first step toward Web silicon valley including Tokyo is jumping into web tech community through English web services.