So Who’s Next?
This is a two-pronged question. On one hand, if you’re asking who the next Silicon Valley is, the answer is nobody. You can disagree if you wish, but the very thought that anyone can catch up to 60 years of innovation and drive is laughable at best. But then there’s the other side of this story, where sites such as NYC, Boston and Boulder don’t have to pave their own paths. That pathway has already been set and these other areas are now free to capitalize on them. If you had said, the day after he launch of the iPhone, that you were going to build a business in NYC to make iPhone apps, you’d have been laughed at. Today, that’s a perfectly viable idea, but it is only viable because the Valley was just crazy enough to make an idea like the iPhone work. The other prong to this is a question of what area is going to pop onto the radar next. I’m expecting huge things from Austin in the next couple of years, and not just from the big name side of things. I also expect to see more from the Miami, Florida region, as well as a continued growth in Chicago and my own hang-my-hat of Nashville. Each of these areas is uniquely qualified to succeed in its own way, as long as they don’t get caught up in the idea of being “Silicon” anything. (via An Outsider’s Perspective on the US Tech Hotbeds - The Next Web)
