Silicon Valley is the resident of most of the American corporation that is specializing in advanced and sophisticated information and electronic technologies. It is situated around California, San Jose, and Santa Clara. It was first called “Silicon Valley” by Donald C. Hoefler, a newspaper writer, in 1971. Silicon Valley is seen as the center for the new and up-to-date developing technologies that most people thought would bring revolution to computers, manufacturing procedures, telecommunications, warfare, and the entire U.S. economic sector. The symbol of its name means a type of risky venture characterized by quick gain or loss, a great mobility of job, and natural behavior. Some people believed that this trait would be the future wave.
William Shockley, an English-born physicist, is the single founder of Silicon Valley. He was working on the early transistor concepts at Bell Laboratories before the beginning of World War II. William proceeded to be the director of the Bell Transistor Physics Research Group. He is a workaholic whose entrepreneurial aspiration, and inquisitive mind was not satisfied in the bigger corporation, so he became a professor in 1954 at the California Institute of Technology. In the subsequent year, William established the Shockley Semiconductor Laboratories in the southern part of Palo Alto in the northern end of Silicon Valley. William’s business acumen didn’t equate his unique skills in engineering and science. However, in 1957, some of his engineers had a defect to build up the Fairchild Semiconductor. This was supported by the Fairchild Instrument and Camera
The departure of Fairchild Semiconductor created a model of job mobility that mainly characterized various careers in Silicon Valley and the whole electronics companies. This made most employees to shun the bonding of corporate loyalty, thereby favoring the personal financial reward and fulfillment. To reinforce this model, Gordon Moore, Robert Noyce, and Andrew Grove founded the Intel in 1968. W. J. Sanders III, an employee in Fairchild, established the Advanced Micro Devices. In the early years of 1970, a survey that was carried out discovered that over 40 companies in Silicon Valley is being headed by former employees of Fairchild. This pattern proceeded into the early 1980s with companies like National Semiconductor, Cypress Semiconductor, Apple Computer, Atari, and LSI Logic. They all originated from Silicon Valley.
Many people believed that California location contributed to the success and the aftermath challenges of Silicon Valley. The clement climate of Silicon Valley, with the combination of a pool of pure talent from the higher institutions of California and a big non-union workforce, attracted corporations and investors alike. News written about Silicon Valley in the 1970s led to a discussion about new and closed opportunities for the U.S. industrial sector, particularly in electronics. In this regard, the Silicon Valley is representing a profound demographic change in the society of American; a movement in economic and political power from the old industrialized Midwest and Northeast to the Pacific Coast. The tremendous improvement of Silicon Valley took place at a time when adverse changes in the finance markets and capital availability was having a significant effect on most of the developed electronics companies.
In the year 1950 and early 1960, most of the silicon valley depended on military contracts. This dependence decreased as private markets as well as the commercial establishment of computers emerged. Most investors that hoped to have an increased rate of return had the willingness to risk the support of the new electronic companies, although over 25% of them did not succeed within the little years. In the late 1980s, the majority of enterprises indicated that they are in need of $1 billion to put up a manufacturing facility for the up-to-date creation of semiconductors. Observers of corporate strategies and investment practices began to worry that their dependence on venture capital had made a pattern in American business. This model stresses the concern for short-term gains rather than long-term concerns about the development of product and the competition seen among foreign corporations. The success of Silicon Valley and its boost to the image of California and their economy resulted in such states like Michigan, Oregon, Colorado, Texas, Minnesota and New York, to promote advanced firms for electronics.
Silicon Valley faced some challenges caused by foreign competition, from Asian countries particularly Japan. Political and business leaders had a debate which discussed the needs of trade policy in defending the interests and objectives of the U.S. electronics firms. They also questioned on whether U.S. companies needs to receive the funding of the government to ensure that they are more competitive and active in the international market. Silicon Valley had started worrying about the Japanese competition in the late 1970s. During the year 1981, American companies took charge of 51.4 percent of the world’s market for semiconductor; Japan got the share of about 35.5 percent. Within 7 years, the figures reversed themselves virtually, with Japan becoming the 51 percent and America 36.5 percent. U.S. companies began to complain that the Japanese companies are dumping semiconductors in the U.S. market at a very low price to make sure that they undercut the U.S. manufacturers while the Japanese are keeping most of its domestic market closed. The Association for Semiconductor Industry, which represents a majority of the companies in Silicon Valley, pleaded for bilateral agreements so as to open the Japanese market. The first agreement was signed in the year 1986, while the second took place in 1992. At the beginning of 1990, U.S. companies started recovering from some of their loss to Japan. A cycle of boom began in the middle of 1990. This paved the way for the emergence of the electronic and Internet commerce. It resulted in the uprising of the technology stocks and the rapid increase of new markets in the electronics and software industries.
Various factors led to the reduction of the lure of Silicon Valley as the leading center of the computer and electronics industry; these factors include; new technologies, foreign competition and the ascent of a progressive electronic component being manufactured elsewhere in America. People began to learn that the manufacturing and production of electronic components weren’t as neat and safe environmentally, as most of them thought. They also discovered that the growth and improvement of the Silicon Valley resulted to air pollution and traffic congestion.
Final Thoughts
Silicon Valley is the center of research, manufacturing, and development in the electronics industry globally. Moreover, the increase in the “dot.coms” Internet base of the late1990s contributed to the reenergizing of the symbolic role of the area as the frontier of the social and industrial organization. When technology stocks started imploding in early 2001, the massive layoffs began to sweep through the Silicon Valley. This cast a shadow over the immediate future of the area. It also underlined the dependence of the region on the economic sector.