Silicon Valley - staying relevant amidst globalization

There's a very timely article in San Jose Mercury News today on how Silicon Valley is gaining from the technology revoluti0n around the w0rld. HP and CISCO - two Silicon Valley giants today get a majority of their revenues from markets outside of North America. Web 2.0 companies serving markets in Brazil, Turkey and Asia are headquartered or have a strong Valley presence. Even Nokia - once a great example of innovation outside the Silicon Valley has a sizeable R&D presence here now.

None of that is disputable, however there are some telling remarks from another Silicon Valley legend - Bill Watkins, CEO of Seagate in another article in the same newspaper today, "

The immigration bill is very frustrating. Sixty percent of the Ph.D.'s last year were foreign-born. Not one got a green card. We trained them, then we outsourced them.

Every person who gets a Ph.D. in the U.S. should get a green card. I've got to hire those people. If I can't hire them here, we'll start moving the infrastructure of R&D offshore. I have R&D in Singapore now. I can get MIT graduates there - and I get subsidies for it.

This issue, if not addressed in time, will come back to haunt us for generations - we are literally training the best students in the world and instead of making an effort to keep that talent in USA, we are literally outsourcing them to our competitors in China, India and others.