Can DFW Supplant Silicon Valley? Can MITEF Lead the Way?
There is one key reason that Silicone Valley is the epicenter of launching innovative companies, thus creating massive numbers of jobs and creating massive amount of wealth.
The simple reason is that there is in place already very single non-core support component and/or service needed to launch a new company which offers a sustainable competitive advantage over existing providers in that industry.
Thus, all that an entrepreneur needs is a vision of the elegant and optimum solution to an under-served market, for which there would be pent-up demand for a superior product/service to those that they need or have to put up with currently.
They have IP law firms, accounting firms, contract manufacturing, angels and VCs, companies with in place global distribution infrastructure, uber-scalable entrepreneur office/warehouse facilities ( the term for this escapes me at the moment ), PR professionals, uber-scalable staffing companies which handle all the employee benefit and administrative minutia which can drag a new company owner under with its mind-boggling detail, and a lot of interaction facilitating infrastructure.
This could easily be replicated in the DFW Region, and thus we could surpass Silicone Valley as the epicenter of innovation, given the self-destruction mode of the California government, which has public policy leading to the extinction of its business sector and the enormous costs of operating there.
California’s trajectory from a ) paying its firemen annual retirements of over $200,000, b ) its Prop 13 which causes Warren Buffett to pay more in ad valorum taxes on his orange shag carpeted home in Omaha, NE than on his ocean-front cottage in La Jolla, CA, c ) draconian cuts in its higher education and public secondary and elementary schools budgets, d ) the enormous home costs that a newly hired creative class human capital asset would have to pay on top of his/her mid six figure student loans, e) the unbelievably unshakable ( almost ) pit bulls at the California Franchise Tax Board, who seek to tax the air one breathes,
f ) the California Coastal Commission which can defer start of construction on a production facility until the next decade with its red tape unsurpassed by any bureaucracy on earth and absolute authority, g) the massive challenge of air travel scheduling to most parts of the country from having few east-bound commercial flights departing after 6pm, h) the legal framework which allows propositions with insane consequences to business easily becoming law of the land,and finally i) the horrific condition of the air and gridlocked traffic as well as the availability of water on the tipping point of collapse.
Other that, it is a pretty nice place.
Given the enormous complexity and costs an entrepreneur faces at getting her/his company off the ground in California, as well as the constraints on cash and time for a start-up with meteoric growth, many would choose the DFW Region as far more business friendly and a better place to grow one’s business.
I would suggest that the MIT Enterprise Forum might provide the leadership to build a coalition along with the established North Texas Commission to move the epicenter of innovation to the Central Time Zone where we have unmatched airline connections to the nation and to the world and very few weather shutdowns.
Dormand Long
