Hostname: page-component-669899f699-tzmfd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-04-28T12:47:16.721Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Regionalism in Stanford's Contribution to the Rise of Silicon Valley

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 February 2015

Stephen B. Adams
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

In this article I explore the powerful sense of regional solidarity that accompanied the rise of Silicon Valley. From the early years of Stanford University, the university's leaders saw its mission as service to the West and shaped the school accordingly. At the same time, the perceived exploitation of the West at the hands of eastern interests fueled booster-like attempts to build self-sufficient indigenous local industry. Thus, regionalism helped align Stanford's interests with those of the area's high-tech firms for the first fifty years of Silicon Valley's development. The distinctive regional ethos of the West during the first half of the twentieth century is an ingredient of Silicon Valley's already prepared environment, an ingredient that would-be replicators ignore at their peril.

Type
Article
Information
Enterprise & Society , Volume 4 , Issue 3 , 01 September 2003 , pp. 521 - 543
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2003. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Business History Conference. All rights reserved.

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Bibliography of Works Cited

Books

Aitken, Hugh G. J. The Continuous Wave: Technology and American Radio, 1900-1932. Princeton, N.J., 1985.Google Scholar
Hansen, Dirk. The New Alchemists: Silicon Valley and the Microelectronics Revolution. Boston, 1982.Google Scholar
Kenney, Martin, ed. Understanding Silicon Valley: The Anatomy of an Enter-preneurial Region. Stanford, Calif., 2000.Google Scholar
Kiester, Edwin Jr. Donald B. Tressider: Stanford’s Overlooked Treasure. Stanford, Calif., 1992.Google Scholar
Leslie, Stuart W. The Cold War and American Science: The Military-Industrial-Academic Complex at MIT and Stanford. New York, 1993.Google Scholar
Lowen, Rebecca S. Creating the Cold War University: The Transformation of Stanford. Berkeley, Calif., 1997.Google Scholar
Malone, Michael. The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story ofSilicon Valley. New York, 1985.Google Scholar
Markusen, Ann, et al. The Rise of the Gunbelt: The Military Remapping of Industrial America. New York, 1991.Google Scholar
Mitchell, J. Pearce. Stanford University, 1916-1941. Stanford, Calif., 1958.Google Scholar
Nash, George H. Herbert Hoover and Stanford University. Stanford, Calif., 1988.Google Scholar
Nash, Gerald D. World War II and the West: Reshaping the Economy. Lincoln, Nebr., 1990.Google Scholar
Packard, David. The H-P Way. New York, 1995.Google Scholar
Pomeroy, Earl. The Pacific Slope: A History of California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Utah, and Nevada. New York, 1965.Google Scholar
Rogers, Everett, and Larsen, Judith. Silicon Valley Fever. New York, 1984.Google Scholar
Saxenian, AnnaLee. Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, Mass., 1994.Google Scholar
WCEMA Directory. Los Angeles, 1955.Google Scholar
Wilbur, Ray Lyman. The Memoirs of Ray Lyman Wilbur, 1875-1949, ed. Edgar Eugene Robinson and Paul Carroll Edwards. Stanford, Calif., 1960.Google Scholar

Articles and Essays

Bylinsky, Gene. “California’s Great Breeding Ground for Industry.” Fortune (June 1974): 128–35ff.Google Scholar
De Voto, Bernard. “The Anxious West.” Harper’s (Dec. 1946), 481–91.Google Scholar
De Voto, Bernard. “The West against Itself.” Harper’s (Jan. 1947), 1–13.Google Scholar
De Voto, Bernard. “The West: A Plundered Province.” Harper’s (Aug. 1934), 355–64.Google Scholar
Heinrich, Thomas. “Cold War Armory: Military Contracting in Silicon Valley.” Enterprise and Society 3 (June 2002): 247–84.Google Scholar
Hoefler, Don C. “Silicon Valley, USA.” Electronic News (11 Jan. 1971).Google Scholar
Kargon, Robert, and Leslie, Stuart. “Imagined Geographies: Princeton, Stanford and the Boundaries of Useful Knowledge in Postwar America.” Minerva 32 (Summer 1994): 121–43.Google Scholar
Lécuyer, Christophe. “Fairchild Semiconductor and Its Influence.” In The Silicon Valley Edge: A Habitat for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, ed. Lee, Chong-Moon et al. Stanford, Calif., 2000, pp. 158–83.Google Scholar
Leslie, Stuart W. “How the West Was Won: The Military and the Making of Silicon Valley.” In Technological Competitiveness: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives on the Electrical, Electronics, and Computer Industries, ed. Aspray, William. New York, 1993, pp. 75–89.Google Scholar
Miller, Roger, and Cote, Marcel. “Growing the Next Silicon Valley.” Harvard Business Review (July-Aug. 1985): 114–23.Google Scholar
Norberg, Arthur L. “The Origins of the Electronics Industry on the Pacific Coast.” Proceedings of the IEEE 64 (Sept. 1976): 1314–22.Google Scholar
Saxenian, AnnaLee. “Contrasting Patterns of Business Organization in Silicon Valley.” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 10 (1992): 377–91.Google Scholar
Sturgeon, Timothy J. “How Silicon Valley Came to Be.” In Understanding Silicon Valley: The Anatomy of an Entrepreneurial Region, ed. Martin Kenney. Stanford, Calif., 2000, pp. 15–47.Google Scholar
Suchman, Mark C. “Dealmakers and Counselors.” In Understanding Silicon Valley: The Anatomy ofan Entrepreneurial Region, ed. Martin Kenney. Stanford, Calif., 2000, pp. 71–97.Google Scholar
Wolfe, Tom. “The Tinkerings of Robert Noyce: How the Sun Rose on the Silicon Valley.” Esquire (Dec. 1983), 346–74.Google Scholar

Archival Sources

Hoover, Herbert C. Papers, Hoover Institution, Stanford, Calif.Google Scholar
Stanford University Archives, Stanford, Calif.Google Scholar
School of Engineering Papers.Google Scholar
J. E. Wallace Sterling Papers.Google Scholar
Frederick Terman Papers.Google Scholar
Tressider, Donald B. Papers.Google Scholar

Interviews

Saper, Jeffrey D., interview with author, 23 Aug. 2001.Google Scholar
Stearns, H. Myrl, interview with author, 12 June and 15 June 2002.Google Scholar
Stearns, H. Myrl, and Moore, Norman, interview with author, 15 June 2002.Google Scholar