299 replies to this topic

[DanRNC]

A couple of articles came out this week about the Triangle finally competing with Silicon Valley. Do you think the Triangle will ever surpass Silicon Valley in the amount of tech businesses headquartered here? I don't, but it is nice being compared to such a powerhouse.

N&O Story

TBJ Story

[paletexan]

Interesting comparison.  I was curious as to whether they look for a high unemployment rate, or a low one in the study?  A high one indicates lots of labor in the pool, but I do not think it's necessarily a good thing.

Has anyone ever been to Silicon Valley?  How is the planning out there compared to rtp?

[Subway Scoundrel]

My humble opinion ???    We are very far off from beating "Silicon Valley".     I work in the tech industry and travel to San Jose often, and I don't think we are not even close.   Here are the differences as I see it.  Outside of SAS and Red Hat, and if you want to count Tekelec, there are not many large WW HQs based in RTP/Triangle.   We do have Sony-Ericcson NA HQ  (maybe WW) and but few HQs or large sites.  Nortel has shrunk to almost nothing and was not a regional site.    

We do have Lenovo which the area should be doing whatever it can to keep it here, but the HQs is in NY and Beijing.  We do have IBM which has been stated as their largest site in the world, but it has been dwindling.  Having IBM has been a tremendous boost to the triangle and drives many jobs to the Triangle like small offices of companies that have support offices.  Other tech companies have started from people leaving IBM but not like areas like San Jose or Boulder.  

There are negative issues with  the San Jose area, but what they do have is an “entrepreneur” spirit that is unlike anywhere in the world.    That is why so many start-ups happen there and grow to such large companies.  San Jose has the full spectrum of small start-ups, medium size, and large WW companies based there and the support structure to handle.   To give everyone an example, look at the names mention above for HQ for the Triangle (I am sure there are more) and then look at Silicon Valley.  And remember these companies started there as start-ups………Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, Adobe, Google, SUN, Yahoo, eBAY,  Applied Materials, HDS, Silicon Graphics, Agilent,, LSI Logic, NetApps, Maxtor, SANDisk, Brocade, 3Com,Palm, Cypress, Siebel, McAfee.    This does not even mention the North America HQs and large sites of large medium and small Asian  and European companies.

People start businesses in Silicon Valley because of the entrepreneur spirit and the workforce to build these companies.   Companies from around the world come there because that is where the “brain trust” is.   RTP has a 1st/2nd tier Tech workforce but no where comparable to Silicon Valley area.  The one thing that Silicon Valley has going against them is the cost of living.  It is one of, if not the most, expensive place to live in the US and it drives away many capable people.  Although,  there is no shortage of people that will move there.    Plus, add the fact that even though they have energy shortages, earthquakes, the worse traffic you have ever seen, outrageous house prices and seriously upset group of people who become “the underclass”  due to high-living costs and issues that creates, people who live there still call it “PARADISE.”

RTP will continue with tech jobs but I think our real growth area is Pharma and Biotech companies.   Again, this is just my humble opinion.

[paletexan]

Subway Scoundrel, on Sep 22 2005, 01:47 PM, said:

There are negative issues with  the San Jose area, but what they do have is an “entrepreneur” spirit that is unlike anywhere in the world.    That is why so many start-ups happen there and grow to such large companies.  San Jose has the full spectrum of small start-ups, medium size, and large WW companies based there and the support structure to handle.   To give everyone an example, look at the names mention above for HQ for the Triangle (I am sure there are more) and then look at Silicon Valley.  And remember these companies started there as start-ups………Cisco, Oracle, Intel, Apple, Hewlett-Packard, AMD, Adobe, Google, SUN, Yahoo, eBAY,  Applied Materials, HDS, Silicon Graphics, Agilent,, LSI Logic, NetApps, Maxtor, SANDisk, Brocade, 3Com,Palm, Cypress, Siebel, McAfee.    This does not even mention the North America HQs and large sites of large medium and small Asian  and European companies.

That is quite an impressive list of companies incubated there.
From what you saw, is Silicon Valley designed similar to RTP ( a sprawling office park ) ?  Or did it have more of  an identity, and life?  I would imagine they have some really cool things to entertain that high end technology crowd at lunch time.

[moonshield]

Quote

From what you saw, is Silicon Valley designed similar to RTP ( a sprawling office park ) ? Or did it have more of an identity, and life? I would imagine they have some really cool things to entertain that high end technology crowd at lunch time.

From what I know, Silicon Valley happened naturally due to a number of great schools that are located there and the entrepreneur spirit which was already mentioned. There was not an effort, that I know of, to bring companies in and design an office park.

Cisco, Google and a few others had their starts from Stanford University.

http://en.wikipedia..../Silicon_valley

Here you can see what is looks like from the sky
http://maps.google.c...,0.324200&hl=en
its a bit denser than the RTP.

RTP can not in anyway compete with Silicon valley, at least not yet. It's probably not even up to the Seattle area yet. The companies in Silicon valley are much larger and much more valuable than he two current flagship HQs of RTP (red hat and SAS). Oracle just became the largest business software company in the world.

IMO the goal should not be to compete with Silicon Valley but to become the 'Silicon Valley' of the east.

[orulz]

Red hat is not in RTP anymore. They are on NCSU's centennial campus. They are in the triangle, but not in RTP.

Another "famous" technology company HQ'd in the Triangle but not in RTP is Epic Games. Heh.

[NoVA20176]

Everyone in the DC region calls Fairfax County, VA the 'Silicon Valley' of the east.  I don't work in the technology sector, so I really don't know.  Our Tech companies up here are spread out in many different areas of the county though (Rt. 28/dulles airport, Rt. 7/dulles toll rd, Reston, & Tysons Corner).

[urbanesq]

orulz, on Sep 25 2005, 12:05 PM, said:

Red hat is not in RTP anymore. They are on NCSU's centennial campus. They are in the triangle, but not in RTP.

Fair point, but obviously I think when comparing it to the SV region, it still counts.  I think it's a strength to have multiple hubs of tech activity in the Triangle area and Centennial Campus is a great location for that.  

I do worry a bit that the push for biotech centers in the Triad, Greenville, Wilmington, and now in Kannapolis and who knows where else, will mcause too much internal competition and not allow the concentration of activity needed to allow any one area to challenge SV for tech dominance.

[monsoon]

The reality of high tech in the USA is that it is shrinking so I doubt you will see RTP grow to resemble something such as Silicon Valley.   Even Silicon Valley doesn't look as much like Silicon Valley as it once did.  There are several reasons for this.  

First there is a culture in the USA that does not encourage students to enter engineering, science, and  mathematics fields.   There is a stigma applied to it here where the heros of today's generation are basketball players and Hollywood celebs instead of people such as astronauts and scientists.  (compare this to what you see in Japan)   In the USA we have about 50K new engineers entering the industry as opposed to 500,000 in China & Japan.  And in the USA much if this is consumed by our huge military needs.

Second businesses in the USA no longer compete with their employees.  Instead they view them as a managed expense and will layoff them off before retraining.   Other business tricks such as offshoring, compartmentalizing, and the elimination of vertical integration have also caused people to leave the technical fields.   Who wants to go through the heartaches and expense of getting a difficult engineering degree when there are no jobs there?  Ironically this is causing businesses to look off shore for research & design which is another reason such endeavors are on the decline in the USA.  

As we all know, our manufacturing base is being transferred to China and other Asian countries.  This is a blow to RTP because there used to be considerable manufacturing in the Park along with the research and development of manufacturing processes and logistics.  It is one thing to design a product, but it is also quite another to design a process that can build it.    The USA is losing all of this knowledge.  

RTP's future may be like URP's.   They attempted to create another research park similar to RTP in the Charlotte area called URP.  Unfortunately in being about 20 years behind RTP it never gained any critical mass and is in big decline now.   It's premier tennant (like RTP), IBM, built a world class engineering, research and manufacturing facility there in the late 70s early 80s and eventually staffed up to close to 8000 people.  Most of that is gone now and the park is mainly a collection of businesses that serve the banking industry, a center that owned by Wachovia on property that used to belong to IBM, and a bunch of service oriented businesses.  I fear this may be the ultimate fate of RTP as well.

[jaxpalmer]

DanRNC, on Sep 22 2005, 09:26 AM, said:

Do you think the Triangle will ever surpass Silicon Valley in the amount of tech businesses headquartered here? I don't, but it is nice being compared to such a powerhouse.

having lived in both san francisco and growing up in cary, i can say firsthand, the triangle will never surpass silicon valley in terms of tech business, you should really take a tour of the valley to get a scope of just how much of the computer world is headquartered there.  While the triangle is like a east coast silicon valley, sillicon valley could never be outdone, at least by no place in the u.s.

[DanRNC]

What I don't think outsiders (outside of the Triangle) realize is that there are numerous companies in the Triangle, not only in RTP. It is the entire area (Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill and all surrounding areas) not just the "office park" people think. The amount of high quality research coming out of Duke, UNC, and NCSU is quite impressive.

RTP is not even comparable to the URP (this was doomed from the beginning and never maintained a heavy research or think-tank component like RTP and was never even in the same league). I don't think the Triangle will be Silicon Valley but will be the major player on the east coast with Boston for a long-time.

[moonshield]

Quote

In the USA we have about 50K new engineers entering the industry as opposed to 500,000 in China & Japan. And in the USA much if this is consumed by our huge military needs.

That topic is actually quite open to debate.

http://chronicle.com...44/44a01001.htm

[monsoon]

Indeed it is.  I notice that article strangely omits providing any data and doesn't discuss the social and business effects on the technical community in the USA.

[Subway Scoundrel]

paletexan, on Sep 23 2005, 03:02 PM, said:

That is quite an impressive list of companies incubated there.
From what you saw, is Silicon Valley designed similar to RTP ( a sprawling office park ) ?  Or did it have more of  an identity, and life?  I would imagine they have some really cool things to entertain that high end technology crowd at lunch time.

Silicon Valley is not an office park.  It is a huge area that runs North to South in between 2 parallel lines of mountains.  It can be said that SV is the area of land or ”the valley” between these 2 mountains.  I would say it covers the area in length the same distance between Raleigh and Burlington, but could be wrong.  The SV area could be said that it starts at the San Francisco southern border and works it way down below San Jose.  Although most of the companies are located in the San Jose/Santa Clara area with other further north.  

When flying in, you can see it is tightly woven streets and houses with small yards.  There is not much or any empty land left.  That is why the housing is so expensive, as all the land between the mountain ranges is full and to live outside of the ranges, takes a long time and there are not enough roads that cross over the mountains.  

Downtown San Jose is OK size but does not have super tall or large buildings.  There is good nightlife and many restaurants along with several hotels.  The airport is not far from downtown and is much like RDU, as a former American hub city, but with a few more international flights and more direct flights.   But with SF airport just down 101, most of the international flight are there.   It is like driving from Raleigh to Burlington or so to SF airport.  Then north of that is another airport--- Oakland airport.  

The companies like Intel, IBM and such are on campuses or what are similar to our office parks.  Most don’t have sprawling office parks, or if they do, they were set up 40 years ago and they are being sold for their value.  So when driving down a major corridor, you will see a office building with some major company on the side and it will be the HQ or part of its offices.  Very similar to The Forum in North Raleigh.

Traffic is a “bear” as it is like a fishbowl with so many people working and living between the mountains.   I-101 runs north to south and is the major transportation corridor.  There are other interstates that run other directions and some of these have mass transit that runs parallel with VTA (Valley transportation Authority) trains.  These small trains feed throughout the area and then into downtown.  You do see these trains/trams running through downtown, but since the whole valley is basically an office park with houses, it sometimes can be a long walk from station to where you might work, so car travel is needed to most people.    

The thing I like most about that area for mass transportation is Caltrain, which I think is close to what our TTA will be.  That being a train that takes people to certain location centers and transports people over a larger area, but does not necessarily drop you off at the front door of your location.  Caltrain starts south of San Jose and runs north to SF right at Giants stadium.  It covers 2 airports but does not connect directly with them (may connect directly with SFA, but did not a few years ago).  The stations are near and there are shuttles between.   It works very well.   So many people take the train to get from one area to another and many people will fly into San Jose and take the train up to SF for work or the weekend.  

The last point is it is a very international location with many people there are many nationalities and that drives a vast choice of restaurants, lifestyles, languages, etc.  

Overall, it is nice play to live, plenty of jobs but the cost of paying the salaries in a world where the tech companies have to cut cost, is an advantage for RTP, but there is only one Silicon Valley.    If we want to be  the uncontested leader, our big chance is with Pharma/Biotech.

[DanRNC]

As usual Durham is flying beneath the PR radar. A 100,000+ square foot biotech research center/incubator exists in the heart of downtown Durham although no one would ever know.

Link

[urbanesq]

People in the Biotech community know.  Scientific Properties is run by a doctor/developer who specialized in biotech wetlab space.  He is also developing the old Venable warehouses.  He and his wife started a non-profit group that links economically disadvantaged kids in Durham with internships and mentorships in the biosciences.  It was so successful that it now serves kids state-wiode through programs in Winston-Salem and Greenville.  

These developments are a "creative class" case study, and are a great thing for Durham, and for NC generally.

[DanRNC]

Heck, I'm a graduate student in molecular biology at Duke and didn't even know about it. I knew Serenex, a company co-founded by a prof. in my dept., was downtown somewhere but had no idea it was in this facility. Very interesting place.

Edited by DanRNC, 10 October 2005 - 04:30 PM.

[closeminded]

I think that's great!

[yfreemark]

So, just to make things more clear:
There are two Scientific Properties buildings:
1. Triangle Biotechnology Center at Durham Central Park, which is a much smaller building (used to be a garage of some sort), which is where Serenex is.
2. Triangle Biotechnology Center at Venable, which is not finished yet.  It's an old tobacco warehouse that has been/is being renovated.  It held artists, but they're being kicked out for the biotech stuff. (Fortunately, the owner is offering them the move to a space on Foster St at good rates.)

[DanRNC]

That makes sense then. I knew Serenex was in the renovated garage but didn't ever remember a major center down there. Will be pretty cool when its done. Hopefully Duke will get involved like UPenn did up in Philly with a similar project launched by the same company.