1. TM
ACREVS Silicon Valley Strong TM
(Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service)
Foreign Credentials Evaluation
Silicon Valley: A Valley of Brilliance & Dreams
Shanker Munshani
1798 Clear Lake Ave.
Milpitas, CA 95035
www.acrevs.com
P: 1 408 719 0015

2. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
Agenda
 Silicon Valley – San Francisco – Bay Area
 Before it was Silicon Valley
 The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
 Where did it Start
 What makes it Tick …
 Key Contributors
 Key Operatives
 Who/What – Eco System
 The Myth – Revolutionary
 Examples of Innovation
 Higher Ed & Technology
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3. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
SF- Silicon Valley – Bay Area
Region was created by seismic movements of rising
Diablo and Santa Cruz mountains
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4. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
Before it was Silicon Valley, It was…
 Valley of Heart’s Delight - Orchards and Dairy Farms
 World’s Largest producer of Apples, Prunes & Apricots
(Orchard Supply Hardware – OSH)
 Farming Machine Corporation (FMC)  Canning of
produce to building Tanks for the US army
 Microwave Valley
 Indian Motorcycle company
 Ford Motor Company (over 14M Mustangs and trucks)
 Moffett Field – Hanger- Blimp
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Valley of Other (Technology) Industries
 Large Consulting/Contracting companies: e.g. Bechtel
 Bio Tech: e.g. Genentech, Chiron
 Automobile: e.g. Ford, NUMMI (Toyota – GM), Tesla
 Solar industry
 Marine Biology: Monterey
 Robotics
 Animation Movies: Pixar
 Research: Lawrence Livermore Lab, Berkeley Labs
 Lick Observatory Telescope
 Rocket Booster Technology
 Stanford Research Institute (SRI)
 Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC)
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6. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
Silicon was it ….
There was lots of Technology:
all these provided the impetus, but it was
Silicon
that set the trajectory of the Valley …
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The Good, The Bad, The Ugly
The Ugly, First
 Industrial Espionage
 Foreign governments espionage
 Law suits
 Business
 Patent/IP
The Bad
• Raiding for talent
• Reverse Engineering
• “Value-proposition”: people – their skills and ideas
• “No life” – Its Geek talk only
• “Loose lips – sink Chips”
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8. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
The Good – and there is plenty of it
 Of all the industries – perhaps the most ethical lot
 “Value-proposition”: people – their skills and ideas
 “Everyone” has a shot at success – hard work,
innovation,..
 Labor relations coordial
 Rank and file - Share in company’s success – stock
option grants, stock participation etc.
 “Open Door” policy, Access to management (MBWA)
 Casual environment
 Support structure – free food, recreation, ….
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9. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
Where did it Start?
 Shokley – The invention of the transistor
 The treacherous 8 – started the explosion
 Fairchild Instruments & Camera – Fairchild Semiconductor
 There was parallel activity at Bell Labs in New Jersey,
Southern California, Texas Instruments in Texas, Motorolla,
etc. – Silicon Valley wasn’t a given
 The 128 belt in MA was also springing up; IBM on the East
coast (IBM had major operation in the valley inventing the
Hard Disk Drive in San Jose)
 The Fairchild alum and their alum and then their alum
created the Silicon Valley avalanche
 in 1950s – a handful of companies  1961 – over 150
companies and then there were thousands
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10. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
What make it Tick…….
 Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom (Indiana U, professor) was a pioneer
of the notion that complex human systems do not behave as
economic “rational actor” models predict.
By examining “common-pool resources” where parties are utilizing
finite assets – say, an irrigation system in Nepal – she discovered
that people, given the right conditions, actually collaborate and
share limited resources in positive-sum games, rather than fight
against each other in zero-sum or negative-sum games
In the Valley we approach it as
 Co-pete (Cooperate & Compete)
 Grow the Pie – the concept being a smaller share of a large pie is
always greater than a larger share of a smaller pie
Ostrom inadvertently discovered the recipe that underlies Silicon Valley, although she probably never
realized it in her lifetime. This correlation was identified by Victor Hwang of Forbes;
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Key Contributors
 Venture Capital
 Standards – so consumers win
 Quality Management System (e.g. ISO 9001)
 Always evolving
 Grow the Pie – Think BIG
 Build it and they will come (sometimes they don’t –
and that is why there are carcasses) - Lion King’s:
Circle of Technology(a al life?)
 No Unions
 Antitrust fear – keeps players in line
 Napkin business plans written
 Best and brightest – Immigrants contribution
 Walk across the street for a job
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Key Operatives
 The Vertical model collapse and the transformation to
a Horizontal model provided tremendous opportunities
 Moore’s law – The number of transistors on a piece of
silicon will double every 18 months
 Disruptive technologies
 Silicon Valley Mantra: Faster, Cheaper & Better
 SIG Special interest Group/Plug Fest – e.g., Wi-Fi,
USB
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13. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
Who/What is the Eco System
 Unique Schools – source of talent, research/innovation
 Support industries (test equip, mfg)
 Closer to customers for feed-back, face to face
 Mentors /Networking/Sharing ideas
 “The next start up” thinking
 Copete
 Brain-storming; “Your friends get it”
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14. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
Silicon Valley’s Brilliance
Brilliance also needs a little bit of luck and the right timing
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15. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
The Myth - Revolutionary
 Technology is about an evolutionary process
 First mover advantage – really? distinction between
leading edge and bleeding edge
 Each generation builds on the prior generation – the
lock-step movement helps it move forward
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16. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
Examples of Innovation..
 Apple, Sun, HP, Cisco, Tivo,
 Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo, Netscape, Tandem
 Intel, AMD, nVidia, Micronics, Seagate
 Paypal, eBay,Adobe
 Oracle, PeopleSoft, Workday, Salesforce, Healtheon,
 Applied Materials, Lam, Solectron,
 Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor, Teledyne
 Paypal, Netflix
 Khan Academy
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Higher Ed & Technology
Battle for MOOC (Massively Open Online Courses)
• MITx  edX: MIT, Harvard, UC-Berkeley
• Udacity: Stanford professors
• Coursera: Stanford professors offer courses from
Princeton, Stanford, Michigan, Penn; joined by U of
Virgina, Duke, CalTech, John Hopkins, Rice, U of
Edinburg
Platforms
Udemy: Tools to design online course; e.g. designed by
professors at Dartmouth, Vassar, Colgate, Duke
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18. Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
Thank you for your time
Contact Information
Shanker Munshani
1798 Clear Lake Ave.
Milpitas, CA 95035-7014
info@acrevs.com
www.acrevs.com
P: 1 408 719 0015
Academic & Credential Records, Evaluation & Verification Service
A Silicon Valley Company
Foreign Credentials Evaluation
www.acrevs.com