The Valley Ain't What It Used To Be

Important interview in the SF Chron with hi-tech maven, Judy Estrin, where she warns about lagging innovation in the Si Valley and the USA. She is quoted as saying:

"That all sorts of forces, from Wall Street's quarterly profit pressures to worsening government deficits, have undermined support for the forward-looking research on which future products will depend."

I've certainly been complaining for a long time about the excessive influence of Wall St. on shortening capacity planning horizons. Estrin also claims that the environment for innovation in Silicon Valley and the United States has already changed for the worse. Whether you agree everything she says or not, I think her comments are important because there seem to be precious few figureheads who are prepared to stand up and tell as it is.

Updated on Thu Aug 28, 2008: Case in point from Slashdot regarding Alcatel-Lucent (née Bell Labs) yanking the financial plug on basic science "like yer startin' a mower!" (to quote Elaine Benes). As I've said before , the Edison model is dead.