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Key Theme: 10 Years

Reflecting on the last 10 years, and looking forwards to the next 10 years of innovations in technology, business models, investing and the business environment, Silicon Valley Comes to Oxford 2010 shall explore the disruptive technologies and business innovations of the past 10 years, reflecting on the demise of old industries, old economic models and old perspectives.

Sub-theme 1: Schumpeter’s Creative Destruction

The advancement of the Internet is arguably the greatest computer science innovation. Its overwhelmingly pervasive power has led to the disruption of established knowledge and cultural industries, sectors which represent the core of our very existence in terms of recording, reporting, reflecting and questioning our society and its culture.

Sub-theme 2: Could Silicon Valley exist anywhere in the world?

The tenth anniversary provides an opportunity to ask whether Silicon Valley could evolve into a generic term or metaphor for an entrepreneurial cluster anywhere in the world. What is the secret of Silicon Valley? Why has Europe never managed to create an equivalent (note that Oxfordshire is recognised as one of the most successful entrepreneurial ecosystems in Europe.) At SVCO 08, investor, Saul Klein questioned whether the richness of European history, its architecture and long established institutions present an impediment. Contrast with Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv. How does national culture, history, geography and policies impact or fuel the formation of entrepreneurial clusters? Is the next Silicon Valley likely to be in Shanghai or the already burgeoning Hyderabad or Bangalore?

Enter Balram Halwai, the “White Tiger” in Aravind Adiga’s 2008 Booker prize winning novel:  servant, entrepreneur and murderer.
Quote:  “…only a man who is prepared to see his family destroyed – hunted, beaten, and burned alive by the masters – can break out of the coop [i.e. perpetual servitude]. That would take no normal human being, but a freak, a pervert of nature. It would, in fact, take a White Tiger. You are listening to the story of a social entrepreneur, sir.”

Balram, the son of a rickshaw-puller, is born in a village in rural India. As a child he never gets the chance to complete his elementary education, instead he’s put to work in a tea-shop where as a “human spider” he wipes tables and crushes coal. Yet, fortune offers him a big chance when a rich village landlord takes him on as chauffeur and sends him off to Delhi to serve his son.
Between the slums and the roaches that characterize the dwellings of the poor and the glitzy shopping malls and hedonistic clubs for the rich he learns that to break the vicious circle of perpetual servitude some spilling of blood is necessary (which he eventually does). By murdering his boss and stealing money destined to bribe a particular politician, the “White Tiger” breaks free from his cage. Balram Halwai escapes and under a false name starts his own business and becomes a successful entrepreneur.

The story is one of utter amorality and irreverence.  Yet, it also raises some interesting questions: How much of a killer-instinct is required to be a successful entrepreneur? Do we have to perhaps revise our culturally constructed image of the ones who “made it”? By hero-worshipping the successful ones, are we perhaps creating deluded narratives?