If we can bring together the Silicon Valley–style entrepreneurship, with taste, style, culture, food, wine, and art in a well-thought-through city center, Menlo Park can indeed become that eclectic creative cauldron so rare and elusive. Housing this creativity should be a series of great public spaces, terraces, patios, plazas and boulevards.
Parts of Silicon Valley are extremely beautiful. My favorite is Woodside. However, other parts of Silicon Valley are plain vanilla. San Jose, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, San Carlos, and Redwood City – these towns have no style and not much to offer in terms of aesthetics. Silicon Valley has never really paid attention to style or
Perhaps of all the American states, California, because of its wine country, has placed the most emphasis on cultivating a food and wine culture. Among our natural advantages, we count great local produce and local wine. In fact, Napa Valley has become one of the country’s greatest tourist destinations.
When I first wrote the piece Silicon Valley: The Next Decade, I did not think that an opportunity to implement the ideas expressed in it would come so soon. Even as I wrote the follow-on piece, The Next European Renaissance, I had not yet started the subsequent discussions with the Menlo Park City Council. However,
The Money and How It Is Applied Of course, the models discussed are predicated upon the fact that the patrons and salonniers had money and were willing to spend it on fostering a community of artists and intellectuals without directly benefiting from such an “investment.”
How Do You Foster Renaissance Thinking? Each period of renaissance from history saw great congregations of talented people from multiple disciplines in certain cities or regions. Two prominent examples are Florence under the Medicis and Elizabethan England. Artists, writers, scientists, and philosophers were in the same place, working close to each other and exchanging ideas
For Indian entrepreneurs looking for scalable venture ideas, here is a list to work on. I have modeled one venture for each category, which you will be able to access from the Vision India 2020 series:
In case you are reading today, Happy July 4th. And here’s some reading to catch up on: Vision India 2020: Renaissance, Gangotri, Maya Ray, Elixar, Bioscope. Entrepreneur Case Studies: Carol Realini (Obopay), Steve Hafner (Kayak), Ramu Yalamanchi (Hi5), Francisco Martin (Strands), Samir Arora (Glam) and Jacob Jacobsson (Blaze DFM).