Plausible Alternate Locations for Silicon Valley

I've seen plenty of threads asking for potential alternate locations for Hollywood (that is, the center of the film industry in the United States, and by extension the world), but what are some plausible alternate locations for *Silicon Valley? That is, regions that could have become host to the lion's share of the American high-tech industry instead of the San Francisco Bay Area.

Obvious alternate locations include other center of economic activity and education in the United States, including the NYC/Tri-State area, New England (could overlap with the former), Southern California, the Chicago area, and the Washington, DC area. Of course, plausible dark horse candidates could be the Pacific Northwest or the Research Triangle in North Carolina.

What are some other plausible options? And how what would be the specific PODs needed for any of these given areas to surpass the Bay Area in this industry?

(As a bonus, what would the San Francisco area look like if the bulk of *Silicon Valley had been established elsewhere instead?)
 
Well, besides the ones you mentioned there was/is the Texas "Silicon Prairie" that first arose in the 1980s, the TV series Halt and Catch Fire was a dramatization of it.
 
Oddly enough, Cincinnati/Louisville/Lexington KY would make for an interesting dark horse candidate, as would Chicago/Urbana-Champaign. If Kodak makes a few changes, Kingsport/Johnson City/Bristol on the TN/VA border could work too. Baltimore/DC/Richmond would be less likely, but Atlanta could serve as a nexus for one around the old Bell Labs facility as well. Orlando/Melbourne/Daytona Beach is plausible *if* NASA funding is healthier as well. Goodyear/Phoenix/Tucson is plausible too but again, these are dark horse candidates. If Microsoft relocates to Atlanta in 1982/1983 (proposed buyout, offer OTL fell apart at the last minute) then maybe that moves a lot of the software programmers with them as well...
 
Oddly enough, Cincinnati/Louisville/Lexington KY would make for an interesting dark horse candidate, as would Chicago/Urbana-Champaign. If Kodak makes a few changes, Kingsport/Johnson City/Bristol on the TN/VA border could work too. Baltimore/DC/Richmond would be less likely, but Atlanta could serve as a nexus for one around the old Bell Labs facility as well. Orlando/Melbourne/Daytona Beach is plausible *if* NASA funding is healthier as well. Goodyear/Phoenix/Tucson is plausible too but again, these are dark horse candidates. If Microsoft relocates to Atlanta in 1982/1983 (proposed buyout, offer OTL fell apart at the last minute) then maybe that moves a lot of the software programmers with them as well...

What would be the latest plausible POD necessary to make this happen? Or, if not making the area the nexus of big tech in America, at least a significant area for it. Having a Silicon Valley, or at least mini-Silicon Valley (Silicon Mountains?) in the middle of Appalachia is incredibly interesting. (Imagine Al Gore's political career in such a world.)
 
One of the big factors in creating Silicon Valley was the Bay Area’s abundance of universities & federally-funded laboratories, and a legal prohibition on non-compete clauses in employment contracts.

When defense contractor Fairchild Camera and Instruments creates the subsidiary Fairchild Semiconductors and set up shop in San Jose in the 1950’s, they did it to be near Stanford, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which were in the Bay Area.

Also the guy who founded Fairchild Semiconductor used to work for Bell Labs and wanted to be as far away from them as possible.

Without non-compete contracts, you had a lot of very smart engineers with managers who didn’t really see the potential of what they were making, who were free to walk out the door, take the knowledge they gained working at Fairchild and start a new company with it like Intel. And since you have all these guys in one area, it makes it easy to hire ex-Fairchild guys, and you’ve got this pipeline of really smart ambitious graduates coming out of Berkeley, Stanford and UCSF who stay in the area and then start their own companies like Atari and Silicon Graphics, and the people leaving those companies go on to found companies like Apple, nVidia, Adobe, etc...

So to make an alternate Silicon Valley happen, you need a state where non-compete contracts are banned. If you have non-competes, anybody at a company who leaves it or is pushed out effectively can’t work in the same industry.

You need a strong public university system. You need a pipeline to be able to have people coming in and replacing the churn of people who left to found their own second generation companies.

You need a strong social safety net. People don’t cycle out of a growing industry if they’re faced with poverty if they try, you need to have a strong social safety net so that people are more able to take risks and leave the nest.

And you need a decent DOD presence as well. Because the DOD is gonna be the first customer and that will allow an alt-Silicon Valley to grow and prosper.

With these factors in mind, the states without strong university systems and social safety nets are out. States with more “employer-friendly” laws towards non-compete contracts are out.

Where is a plausible alt-Silicon Valley possible then?

Perhaps the southwest side of LA? You’ve got UCLA and USC there, you have LA AFB in El Segundo plus the Naval base and shipyard in Long Beach / San Pedro. Not to mention that McDonnel Douglas in Long Beach, North American in Downey, and other tier 1 contractors around the LA basin.
 

kernals12

Banned
How about Boston? The "Route 128 corridor" saw a boom during the 1980s. It's got plenty of universities needed for this high tech industry. And I'm sure even in this timeline, there'll be plenty of articles about how (insert any random city here) is the next Route 128. As for the Bay Area, I don't think it'll look very different. People talk about the "tech boom" in Silicon Valley but population growth in the Bay Area has not been very impressive in the last 25 years.

BTW I hate it when people use "tech industry" to refer to the computer industry. Everything ever invented is technology.
 
How about Boston? The "Route 128 corridor" saw a boom during the 1980s. It's got plenty of universities needed for this high tech industry. And I'm sure even in this timeline, there'll be plenty of articles about how (insert any random city here) is the next Route 128. As for the Bay Area, I don't think it'll look very different. People talk about the "tech boom" in Silicon Valley but population growth in the Bay Area has not been very impressive in the last 25 years.

BTW I hate it when people use "tech industry" to refer to the computer industry. Everything ever invented is technology.

While plausible, Massachusetts doesn’t ban non-compete clauses to the same extent that California does, that means if your equivalent of Fairchild Semiconductor has legal leverage to keep employees from starting their own companies with their co-workers from Fairchild while the management is stuck in the past.

Also, being so close to Bell Labs and IBM means that any early talk about whatever somebody is doing is more likely gonna get it sued/legally threatened into oblivion by Bell and IBM in the early stages rather than in a later stage when they’d have some ability to fight back.
 
How about Boston? The "Route 128 corridor" saw a boom during the 1980s. It's got plenty of universities needed for this high tech industry. And I'm sure even in this timeline, there'll be plenty of articles about how (insert any random city here) is the next Route 128. As for the Bay Area, I don't think it'll look very different. People talk about the "tech boom" in Silicon Valley but population growth in the Bay Area has not been very impressive in the last 25 years.

BTW I hate it when people use "tech industry" to refer to the computer industry. Everything ever invented is technology.
Had George A Philbrick Researches, an early electronics company that lost out to Fairchild
 
While plausible, Massachusetts doesn’t ban non-compete clauses to the same extent that California does, that means if your equivalent of Fairchild Semiconductor has legal leverage to keep employees from starting their own companies with their co-workers from Fairchild while the management is stuck in the past.

Interestingly, to the earlier point about Northeast Tennessee, in that state "[n]on-compete agreements are generally not favored by the courts because they are viewed as restraints on trade."
 
How about Boston? The "Route 128 corridor" saw a boom during the 1980s. It's got plenty of universities needed for this high tech industry. And I'm sure even in this timeline, there'll be plenty of articles about how (insert any random city here) is the next Route 128. As for the Bay Area, I don't think it'll look very different. People talk about the "tech boom" in Silicon Valley but population growth in the Bay Area has not been very impressive in the last 25 years.

BTW I hate it when people use "tech industry" to refer to the computer industry. Everything ever invented is technology.

"Tech" (I agree it's a vague term) is pretty big in the Boston/Cambridge area OTL.
 
One of the big factors in creating Silicon Valley was the Bay Area’s abundance of universities & federally-funded laboratories, and a legal prohibition on non-compete clauses in employment contracts.

Agreed. Strong universities in proximity and a solid public educational system do not hurt either.

When defense contractor Fairchild Camera and Instruments creates the subsidiary Fairchild Semiconductors and set up shop in San Jose in the 1950’s, they did it to be near Stanford, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which were in the Bay Area.

So looking at (a) Cincinnati/Louisville/Lexington, (b)Kingston/Johnson City/Bristol, (c) Decatur/Florence/Gadsden AL, and (d) Atlanta, at (a) you have as universities: Kentucky, Louisville, Transylvania, Centre [College], Bellerman, Northern Kentucky, Kentucky State, and multiple others. For (b) you get Oak Ridge up the street along with East Tennessee State, U Tennessee and VA Tech are in close proximity, and several others close by. For (c) the selection is a bit less *but* you already have the technical side of the Redstone Arsenal and various other labs with easy access to those schools in Nashville and Birmingham. There are so many smaller schools in Atlanta in addition to GA Tech, Emory, and nearby UGA as to prevent listing them all here.

Also the guy who founded Fairchild Semiconductor used to work for Bell Labs and wanted to be as far away from them as possible.

Although I-81 connects directly to (b) and indirectly to (c), all three are far enough away to be more than a short drive or flight away, (d) not withstanding though issues about (never being able to have) a second airport will remain. And the hub at (a) is already one of the highest-ranked airports in the US apparently.

Without non-compete contracts, you had a lot of very smart engineers with managers who didn’t really see the potential of what they were making, who were free to walk out the door, take the knowledge they gained working at Fairchild and start a new company with it like Intel. And since you have all these guys in one area, it makes it easy to hire ex-Fairchild guys, and you’ve got this pipeline of really smart ambitious graduates coming out of Berkeley, Stanford and UCSF who stay in the area and then start their own companies like Atari and Silicon Graphics, and the people leaving those companies go on to found companies like Apple, nVidia, Adobe, etc...

So to make an alternate Silicon Valley happen, you need a state where non-compete contracts are banned. If you have non-competes, anybody at a company who leaves it or is pushed out effectively can’t work in the same industry.[/quote]

Appalachia is an untapped resource of talent and labor. Even unskilled labor would prosper to some extent, but there are plenty of folks 'in the hills' with the brains but not the resources to go for much higher education. Some are also highly inventive too. As for the contracts I do not know enough to speak to those points.
You need a strong public university system. You need a pipeline to be able to have people coming in and replacing the churn of people who left to found their own second generation companies.

You need a strong social safety net. People don’t cycle out of a growing industry if they’re faced with poverty if they try, you need to have a strong social safety net so that people are more able to take risks and leave the nest.

State grants and 'adjusted' loan policies for easy cash and a lot of desperate people looking for a way out might also be a winning combination.

And you need a decent DOD presence as well. Because the DOD is gonna be the first customer and that will allow an alt-Silicon Valley to grow and prosper.

Fort Knox, Fort Campbell, Oak Ridge, Redstone Arsenal, Air Force Plant 67...and those are just the major ones nearby...

With these factors in mind, the states without strong university systems and social safety nets are out. States with more “employer-friendly” laws towards non-compete contracts are out.

Appalachia, apparently...But Texas, Florida, Northern Illinois, Colorado, Arizona, and maybe even Salt Lake City would work. Play the scenario right and even Las Vegas or Reno would work.
 
Oddly enough, Cincinnati/Louisville/Lexington KY would make for an interesting dark horse candidate...If Kodak makes a few changes, Kingsport/Johnson City/Bristol on the TN/VA border could work too.

You sir, have my attention; please explain further, if you will.
 
One of the big factors in creating Silicon Valley was the Bay Area’s abundance of universities & federally-funded laboratories, and a legal prohibition on non-compete clauses in employment contracts.

When defense contractor Fairchild Camera and Instruments creates the subsidiary Fairchild Semiconductors and set up shop in San Jose in the 1950’s, they did it to be near Stanford, UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, which were in the Bay Area.

Also the guy who founded Fairchild Semiconductor used to work for Bell Labs and wanted to be as far away from them as possible.

Without non-compete contracts, you had a lot of very smart engineers with managers who didn’t really see the potential of what they were making, who were free to walk out the door, take the knowledge they gained working at Fairchild and start a new company with it like Intel. And since you have all these guys in one area, it makes it easy to hire ex-Fairchild guys, and you’ve got this pipeline of really smart ambitious graduates coming out of Berkeley, Stanford and UCSF who stay in the area and then start their own companies like Atari and Silicon Graphics, and the people leaving those companies go on to found companies like Apple, nVidia, Adobe, etc...

So to make an alternate Silicon Valley happen, you need a state where non-compete contracts are banned. If you have non-competes, anybody at a company who leaves it or is pushed out effectively can’t work in the same industry.

You need a strong public university system. You need a pipeline to be able to have people coming in and replacing the churn of people who left to found their own second generation companies.

You need a strong social safety net. People don’t cycle out of a growing industry if they’re faced with poverty if they try, you need to have a strong social safety net so that people are more able to take risks and leave the nest.

And you need a decent DOD presence as well. Because the DOD is gonna be the first customer and that will allow an alt-Silicon Valley to grow and prosper.

With these factors in mind, the states without strong university systems and social safety nets are out. States with more “employer-friendly” laws towards non-compete contracts are out.

Where is a plausible alt-Silicon Valley possible then?

Perhaps the southwest side of LA? You’ve got UCLA and USC there, you have LA AFB in El Segundo plus the Naval base and shipyard in Long Beach / San Pedro. Not to mention that McDonnel Douglas in Long Beach, North American in Downey, and other tier 1 contractors around the LA basin.

You've basically said it here without saying it, but finding a metro area that's entirely within the boundaries of a single state is also important for regulatory reasons as well as for equality of experience in terms of the social safety net. The altering circumstances of eastern states presents a problem, and the fact that they could go on changing every 2-4 years depending on who is in power is even less appealing. While many eastern states are pretty reliably one-party affairs, not all of them are, and the degree of "blueness" shifts from state to state.

So how many eastern metro areas lie within one state? Basically none. Boston's the closest, and could count in a pinch if the non-compete factors mentioned in that Vox article from a year or two ago didn't disqualify it.

Texas is hardly a welcoming environment for the level of risk generated by the industry, and as far as I can tell that's the main reason they lost it IOTL.

You could come up with a scenario where other factors overwhelm the positives of California. Like if the government was convinced to pay for a lot of CS infrastructure in a particular area that was then opened to the general public.

But I'm still more skeptical of any plans that cross state lines.
 
As for what the Bay Area would look like, probably pretty similar. It's a very pleasant place to live and lots of people would want to go there. Okay, south bay might not be quite so expensive, but the population levels would be the same. It's what happens when you drastically under-build housing for 30+ years. Canceling the tech industry might get you a population influx that's somewhat closer to being served by the amount of housing built, but it certainly wouldn't be low enough to affect supply and demand dynamics. The ranch houses of Palo Alto might not be worth $2 million like IOTL but they could easily clear $1 million.

San Francisco would be much less affected by the disappearance of the industry. Despite the animus directed at tech folk for having the goddamn NERVE to want to live in a cool city, they have a lot less affect on the poor and middle class being priced out than the fact that San Francisco- and lots of other American cities- just do not build nearly enough housing for everyone who wants to live in them.

You shutter one industry in a nation with a large service economy and people are still going to start plenty of new services in the places that are most desirable to live in. San Francisco will look the same as it does today.
 

kernals12

Banned
As for what the Bay Area would look like, probably pretty similar. It's a very pleasant place to live and lots of people would want to go there. Okay, south bay might not be quite so expensive, but the population levels would be the same. It's what happens when you drastically under-build housing for 30+ years. Canceling the tech industry might get you a population influx that's somewhat closer to being served by the amount of housing built, but it certainly wouldn't be low enough to affect supply and demand dynamics. The ranch houses of Palo Alto might not be worth $2 million like IOTL but they could easily clear $1 million.

San Francisco would be much less affected by the disappearance of the industry. Despite the animus directed at tech folk for having the goddamn NERVE to want to live in a cool city, they have a lot less affect on the poor and middle class being priced out than the fact that San Francisco- and lots of other American cities- just do not build nearly enough housing for everyone who wants to live in them.

You shutter one industry in a nation with a large service economy and people are still going to start plenty of new services in the places that are most desirable to live in. San Francisco will look the same as it does today.
This^
 
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