AnnaLee Saxenian is a professor and the former Dean of the UC Berkeley School of Information, known widely for her work on technology clusters and social networks in

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is 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 area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

. 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, United States. It was established as a men's college in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim ...

in 1976 and her PhD from

Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a Private university, private research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Established in 1861, MIT has played a significant role in the development of many areas of moder ...

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 that lies on the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. It borders Oregon to the north, Nevada and Arizona to the east, and shares Mexico–United States border, an ...

'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 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 of the US. Her 2006 book, ''The New Argonauts: Regional Advantage in a Global Economy'', explores the

globalization Globalization is the process of increasing interdependence and integration among the economies, markets, societies, and cultures of different countries worldwide. This is made possible by the reduction of barriers to international trade, th ...

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

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

n, Chinese, and

Israel Israel, officially the State of Israel, is a country in West Asia. It Borders of Israel, shares borders with Lebanon to the north, Syria to the north-east, Jordan to the east, Egypt to the south-west, and the Mediterranean Sea to the west. Isr ...

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

References

Bibliography

* ''Regional 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 Massachusetts Institute of Technology alumni {{US-compu-bio-stub University of California, Berkeley School of Information faculty