AnnaLee Saxenian is a professor and the current Dean of the

UC Berkeley School of Information The University of California, Berkeley, School of Information, also known as the UC Berkeley School of Information or the I School, is a graduate school and, created in 1994, the newest of the schools at the University of California, Berkele ...

, known widely for her work on technology clusters and social networks in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

. She received her BA from

Williams College Williams College is a Private college, private liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Williamstown, Massachusetts. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams, a col ...

in 1976 and her PhD from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...

in 1989. In her book ''Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128'' (1994), Saxenian proposes a hypothesis to explain why

California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...

's Silicon Valley was able to keep up with the fast pace of technological progress during the 1980s, while the vertically integrated firms of the

Route 128 The following highways are numbered 128: Canada * New Brunswick Route 128 * Ontario Highway 128 (former) * Prince Edward Island Route 128 Costa Rica * National Route 128 India * National Highway 128 (India) Japan * Japan National Route 128 ...

beltway fell behind. She argues that the key was Silicon Valley's decentralized organizational form, non-proprietary standards, and tradition of cooperative exchange (sharing information and outsourcing for component parts), in opposition to hierarchical and independent industrial systems in the East Coast. Her 2006 book, ''The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy'', explores the

globalization Globalization, or globalisation (Commonwealth English; see spelling differences), is the process of interaction and integration among people, companies, and governments worldwide. The term ''globalization'' first appeared in the early 20t ...

of the technology workforce that has occurred as the " brain drain" becomes a "brain circulation" with immigrant

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

Chinese Chinese can refer to: * Something related to China * Chinese people, people of Chinese nationality, citizenship, and/or ethnicity **''Zhonghua minzu'', the supra-ethnic concept of the Chinese nation ** List of ethnic groups in China, people of va ...

, and

Israel Israel (; he, יִשְׂרָאֵל, ; ar, إِسْرَائِيل, ), officially the State of Israel ( he, מְדִינַת יִשְׂרָאֵל, label=none, translit=Medīnat Yīsrāʾēl; ), is a country in Western Asia. It is situated ...

i professionals taking the Silicon Valley entrepreneurial model to their home countries while also maintaining connections with the US.

References

Bibliography

* ''Régional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128'' Harvard University Press, 1994, * ''The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy'' Harvard University Press, 2007, * ''Il vantaggio competitivo dei sistemi locali nell'era della globalizzazione. Cultura e competizione nella Silicon Valley e nella Route 128'' FrancoAngeli, 2002, * ''Silicon Valley's new immigrant entrepreneurs'' Public Policy Institute of California, 1999, * ''The Silicon Valley-Hsinchu Connection: Technical Communities and Industrial Upgrading'' Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, 1999 * ''Local and Global Networks of Immigrant Professionals in Silicon Valley'' Public Policy Instit. of CA, 2002, * ''America's New Immigrant Entrepreneurs'' 2012 * ''Regional networks and the resurgence of Silicon Valley'' Institute of Urban & Regional Development, University of California, 1989 * ''The Cheshire Cat's Grin: Innovation, Regional Development and the Cambridge Case'' Massachusetts Institute of Technology Department of Political Science, 1987 * ''The origins and dynamics of production networks in Silicon Valley'' Institute of Urban and Regional Development, University of California, 1990 * ''A Fugitive Success: Finland's Economic Future'' SITRA, 2008,

External links

* Year of birth missing (living people) Living people American people of Armenian descent University of California, Berkeley faculty Williams College alumni {{US-compu-bio-stub