Silicon Valley Won't Dominate Tech Forever

My thoughts are that, as companies became larger, they calcify and innovation ceases. Graham mentions Detroit in passing in that article but doesn't acknowledge that, in the 1910s Detroit WAS a hub where enormous innovation was taking place. I want to ask: where did Detroit's nerds go? The region still is quite wealthy[0] and has more millionaires than San Jose. However Detroit has neither an intact urban core, nor a flagship university. The auto industry barons (like Henry Ford or Walter Chrysler) never built a namesake college, the reason for that I'm not really sure.

Graham also mentions Pittsburgh in the article. As a native of the city I think he discounts the changes that have taken place in the decades since he has lived here. There is definitely an interesting old urban city here with a reasonable sized start-up scene. The winter weather is no worse than a place like Boston. He's right about the lack of VC wealth, though. It seems that all the old steel money isn't really interested that much in funding tech start-ups, although I think that's slowly changing too.

[0]http://247wallst.com/2011/07/13/the-american-cities-with-the...