1. Entrepreneurship & Innovation
Culture in Silicon Valley
Gigi Wang
Managing Partner, MG-Team LLC
Board Member & Chair Emeritus, VLAB
HappyFarm Start-Up Workshops
12 November 2012

2. About Me
 Born in Taiwan, grew up in US. English is 3rd language.
 BS & MS in Engineering from Stanford, MBA from UC
Berkeley
 Worked for 3 Fortune 100’s – Exxon, AT&T, Quaker Oats
 Early stage or founding team of multiple start-ups
(InterNex, Pacific Internet in Singapore, truste.org, Ascend
– now Alcatel, UptimeOne, QALA, July Systems)
 Currently:
o Managing Partner, MG-Team LLC – international strategic consulting
o Board Member & Chair Emeritus, MIT/Stanford Venture Lab (VLAB)
o Venture Partner, Silicon Valley, iGlobe Partners (venture capital)

3. It Starts with Culture
In addition to the excellent academic
institutions and R&D, governmental
support, and access to investment
capital, it’s the culture that really makes
a region like Silicon Valley so unique
and wildly successful

4. Need to Trust
 TRUST begins with open-ness &
transparency
– People don’t trust leaders in governments or
management who aren’t transparent
 Practice being open and sharing
information, build trust
 Trust must be mutual or it’s not win-win
 Where there is trust, the culture is good

5. Risk-Taking
 RISK-TAKING: Innovation and
entrepreneurship requires risk-taking in
addition to passion.
 Go beyond your comfort zone.
 Work in new areas, interact with new people or
travel to new places (cultural tourism)
 Failure is good. Making mistakes leads to
valuable experience and knowledge.
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Thomas Edison

6. Collaboration
 COLLABORATION: People need to share
ideas and work on problems together, even
competitors
 Networking in environment of open-ness
• Kyiv Open Doors – April 2012
• Happy Farm networking events
 In the high-tech market place, it’s not about
fighting over the existing pie, but GROWING
the pie together

7. Integrity
 INTEGRITY: High level of integrity required
to be open and to collaborate effectively
 Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) is standard
procedure and captures intent
 Integrity is not just about being honest
 Relationship Integrity – very key concept
o Not zero-sum game
o Make sure that it’s about “Give & Take” and that
“Win-Win-Win” is the objective, not “Win-Lose”
o Example: Andrew Mason (Groupon CEO)

8. Accessibility
 ACCESSIBILITY: Provide budding
entrepreneurs lots of access to experience and
brainpower resources
 Budding entrepreneurs  Go to events, talk to
strangers. Take a risk and introduce yourself – no
need for formal intro’s (old European style).
Reach out with Facebook & LinkedIn.
 Successful entrepreneurs and leaders  Be
open and available. Talk to the young
entrepreneurs, share your valuable advice and
learning

9. Constructive Feedback
 FEEDBACK: Absolutely critical to get
feedback to understand what you’ve done
right and what you’ve done wrong
 Feedback needs to be “constructive” NOT
“negative criticism”
 Delivering “negative criticism” to make one’s
feel more powerful or important is counter-
productive and destructive.
o Leaders need to be on the alert of this on their
teams or in their organizations

10. Empowerment
 EMPOWER: Give everyone a chance to
contribute to their fullest with ideas and
decisions
 “Innovation from the top down is orderly, but
innovation from the bottom is chaotic but
produces mega-success”
 Examples: Google (Adwords product), Pacific
Internet, VLAB
 As leaders, provide inspiration & direction, not orders.
Be there primarily to provide guidance and help address
emergencies.

11. Share the Wealth
 SHARE, SHARE, SHARE
 Equitable pay, travel guidelines, perks
 Stock options – with employees, with advisors
 Examples:
o Ascend Communications (now Alcatel) – generous
with stock and benefits, bought by Lucent for $21B
o Infosys (India IT company) – employees were rich
o Google – free lunches, massages, car washes, etc.

12. Jealousy (and lack therof)
 JEALOUSY: The Silicon Valley exhibits a
much less jealous culture than many parts of
Europe and Asia
 Instead of being jealous when someone else
does better, see it as an opportunity to have
a relationship with someone successful
 It’s more constructive, and less destructive
for a company, for a region, for a country

13. Develop the Right Culture
 Key characteristics include open-ness and
collaboration, high level of risk-taking, and
open and collaborative “people networking”
environment
 How do we teach ethics and instill high
society and relationship integrity into the
next generation of global citizens?

14. What is Innovation?
Innovation is the creation of better or more
effective products, processes, services,
technologies, or ideas that are accepted by
markets, governments, and society.
Innovation differs from invention in that
innovation refers to the use of a new idea or
method, whereas invention refers more
directly to the creation of the idea or method
itself.
- WIKIPEDIA

15. Creating Value for Markets

16. How to Innovate
 Understand the customers and the market.
o Hear your customers, not just listen.
o Very few succeed with just “gut” feel (Jobs,
Zuckerberg)
 Conceptualize, Design and Prototype
 Collect feedback, lots of it
 Iterate, iterate, iterate
 As leaders, promote the culture and develop
processes for innovation

17. An Innovation Framework
 Five Disciplines of
Innovation, by Curt Carlson
o CEO of SRI International
o Founder of HDTV technology
 SRI - hot-bed of innovation
o Computer mouse
o Cancer curing drugs
o Artificial intelligence on
iPhone

18. Five Disciplines (SRI)
 Important Customer & Market Needs
o Need to address an important customer or market
need, not address an interesting project
 Value Creation
 Innovation Champions
o Someone needs to champion the innovation
 Innovation Teams
o Multi-discipline skills required to bring to market
 Organizational Alignment

19. Anyone Can Be Innovative

20. THANK YOU!
Gigi Wang
Board Member & Chair Emeritus, MIT/Stanford
Venture Lab
Managing Partner, MG-Team LLC
<Gigi.Wang@MG-Team.com>