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HBR IdeaCast

How Silicon Valley Became Uncool

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Communication, Business, Harvard, Strategy, Business/management, Teams, Business/marketing, Management, Leadership, Finance, Marketing, Hbr, Economics, Innovation, Business/entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship

4.31.9K Ratings

🗓️ 11 September 2014

⏱️ 13 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Walter Frick, HBR editor, explains why we valorize tech heroes from the past, but scoff at today's entrepreneurs.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

The Closer Podcast brings you the inside story of deals changing the world, told by the people who know how it all went down.

0:09.0

Understand the human motivations behind groundbreaking business decisions with host Amy Keene.

0:14.6

Listen to The Closer,cast from Harvard Business Review.

0:32.7

I'm Sarah Green.

0:33.9

I'm talking today with my colleague Walter Frick about his essay Innovation Then End Now,

0:39.1

about why we lionize the tech industries past,

0:42.1

but is so enjoying mocking its present.

0:44.6

Well thank you so much for talking with us today.

0:46.7

Glad to be here.

0:48.0

So I wanted to start with the lionizing.

0:50.6

Tell me what you mean when you say we lionize the industry's past.

0:54.4

What are some examples of that happening?

0:56.4

So there are a couple of books out that I write about in the essay that essentially

1:01.6

our looks back at either the early days of Silicon Valley. essay that

1:05.0

the way that the computing industry came to be.

1:09.0

And they are appropriately stories about some very talented people who made very serious technological breakthroughs or started really transformative businesses and essentially revolutionized the way that we live and the way that we do

1:24.3

business bringing computers to every home, creating smartphones, etc.

1:29.0

And we appropriately look back and say essentially these were really, really important innovations and we want to know how did they happen and who are these great people who brought them to us.

1:37.0

Well and it's interesting because one of the books is called the Intel Trinity and it's by Michael S. Malone Malone but I was struck by that title because even

1:44.7

calling it the Intel Trinity makes it sound kind of religious or something.

1:48.8

Yeah and so I think it's it's one part kind of when we look back in the rearview mirror sort of

1:54.3

we we come up with this idea of these people as great and sort of the farther back

...

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