Originally published in 1997 this book examines the unique nature and characteristics of Silicon Valley and looks at the factors that led to the economic and competitiveness problems of the 1980s. The research concluded that the information revolution caused a complex set of events that had global ramifications. Silicon Valley was no longer operating as a driver of this revolution, but it was facing the onslaught of the global competitiveness it had unleashed.

Originally published in 1997 this book examines the unique nature and characteristics of Silicon Valley and looks at the factors that led to the economic and competitiveness problems of the 1980s. The research concluded that the information revolution caused a complex set of events that had global ramifications. Silicon Valley was no longer operating as a driver of this revolution, but it was facing the onslaught of the global competitiveness it had unleashed.

Today, the Bay Area is home to the most successful knowledge economy in America, while Los Angeles has fallen progressively further behind its neighbor to the north and a number of other American metropolises. Yet, in 1970, experts would have predicted that L.A. would outpace San Francisco in population, income, economic power, and influence. The usual factors used to explain urban growth—luck, immigration, local economic policies, and the pool of skilled labor—do not account for the contrast between the two cities and their fates. So what does? The Rise and Fall of Urban Economies challenges many of the conventional notions about economic development and sheds new light on its workings. The authors argue that it is essential to understand the interactions of three major components—economic specialization, human capital formation, and institutional factors—to determine how well a regional economy will cope with new opportunities and challenges. Drawing on economics, sociology, political science, and geography, they argue that the economic development of metropolitan regions hinges on previously underexplored capacities for organizational change in firms, networks of people, and networks of leaders. By studying San Francisco and Los Angeles in unprecedented levels of depth, this book extracts lessons for the field of economic development studies and urban regions around the world.

Tracing the genealogy of our physical interaction with mobile devices back to textile and needlecraft culture. For many of our interactions with digital media, we do not sit at a keyboard but hold a mobile device in our hands. We turn and tilt and stroke and tap, and through these physical interactions with an object we make things: images, links, sites, networks. In The Fabric of Interface, Stephen Monteiro argues that our everyday digital practice has taken on traits common to textile and needlecraft culture. Our smart phones and tablets use some of the same skills—manual dexterity, pattern making, and linking—required by the handloom, the needlepoint hoop, and the lap-sized quilting frame. Monteiro goes on to argue that the capacity of textile metaphors to describe computing (weaving code, threaded discussions, zipped files, software patches, switch fabrics) represents deeper connections between digital communication and what has been called “homecraft” or “women's work.” Connecting networked media to practices that seem alien to media technologies, Monteiro identifies handicraft and textile techniques in the production of software and hardware, and cites the punched cards that were read by a loom's rods as a primitive form of computer memory; examines textual and visual discourses that position the digital image as a malleable fabric across its production, access, and use; compares the digital labor of liking, linking, and tagging to such earlier forms of collective production as quilting bees and piecework; and describes how the convergence of intimacy and handiwork at the screen interface, combined with needlecraft aesthetics, genders networked culture and activities in unexpected ways.

Venture capital (VC) refers to investments provided to early-stage, innovative, and high growth start-up companies. A common characteristic of all venture capital investments is that investee companies do not have cash flows to pay interest on debt or dividends on equity. Rather, investments are made with a view towards capital gain on exit. The most sought after exit routes are an initial public offering (IPO), where a company lists on a stock exchange for the first time, and an acquisition exit (trade sale), where the company is sold in entirety to another company. However, VCs often exit their investments by secondary sales, wherein the entrepreneur retains his or her share but the VC sells to another company or investor buybacks, where the entrepreneur repurchases the VC`s interest and write-offs (liquidations). The Oxford Handbook of Venture Capital provides a comprehensive picture of all the issues dealing with the structure, governance, and performance of venture capital from a global perspective. The handbook comprises contributions from 55 authors currently based in 12 different countries.

A history of the innovative practices in the San Francisco-area electronics industry that paved the way for the rise of the computer industry in Silicon Valley.

Reviewing the development of California's Silicon Valley, from the now legendary meeting of Hewlett and Packard to the development of the Stanford Research Park to the near overnight success of Apple Computers, Intel, etc., the authors present a history of the development of the technology and the amazing individuals who created it, as well as a sociological study of that technology in its local, national and international contexts. They conclude with a thought-provoking assessment of the future of Silicon Valley, the capability of the Japanese to overtake the Americans and the changes to be seen in an "information society." ISBN 0-465-07821-4 : $19.95.