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What's in a name? Everything and nothing, actually. By Rohit K. Shukla, larta CEO The fervent attempts to develop regional identity around the world were inspired by the place and the business culture known as Silicon Valley. More often, they are nothing more than "Silicon Envy." The madness for us in Southern California, however, is mandatory. The runaway success of Silicon Valley in the 1990's spawned such perfervid movements to grab a piece of the action that "branding" - a tool often masquerading as identity - became a rallying cry for economic development, marketers, civic boosters and inward investment professionals around the world. The result was that little corners of the world with one or two pieces of the technology jigsaw puzzle thrown up in the late great madness of the Internet Age slapped together monikers which sought to project their identities onto the world stage. Such was the craze of the time that there were no fewer than twenty such attempts, whose only distinguishing feature was that they each had a suffix taken from the natural world and appended onto one commodity - silicon - in order to create the most improbable brands: Silicon Fen, Silicon Prairie, Silicon Mountain, Silicon Lake, and so on. Here in Southern California, where our attempts to be taken seriously were met mostly with incredulity and bemusement during that same period, there was even an attempt to grab onto the one sure identifier associated with the area: "Silicone Beach" almost got there. In retrospect, despite our dismissive guffaws, we may have been better off with such an amusing title. It would have guaranteed us the continued attention of a world not inclined to large, messy, sprawling metropolises, and would surely have had little or no competition. It is noteworthy that many of our lads and lasses in the area, tiring of the continued status of "also-ran" that has dogged the Los Angeles area since the whammies of the '90s (riots, fires, floods and earthquakes), declined to join the ranks of siliconia. Two camps emerged: one around the unimaginative "Tech Coast" (hindsight being everything, I can now dismiss such a label since I once embraced it!) - encompassing the notion that all kinds of technology was being bred and developed on this stretch of heaven; and "Digital Coast", focusing on the digital revolution which has an effect on everything, tech or not, in this diverse economic powerhouse. I am pleased that "Tech Coast" was usurped by a band of profiteering marketers, who have been singularly unable to exploit it to any advantage, specific or general, leaving the world to now work with "Digital Coast." True, Industry Standard labeled the attempt as "stupidly named" in 1998. But then The Standard has not exactly been prescient all the time, has it? Indeed, no one has. The name has a certain ring to it, and we can all be grateful that the travails of the Silicon Set can now be shrugged off our less weary shoulders. Southern California, after all, despite the sniggering of siliconia, is pulling through like any hardened tortoise would. Why the branding, in any case? What is in a name, after all? For us, everything, and nothing. Everything, because for many good reasons, the region has grown up through some very hard times, the kind of times that make for good, solid people, and yet gets little respect for its considerable prowess and its not-inconsiderable achievements. It is so sprawling and hides such exquisite nuggets in its brainpower, its private, quietly-toiling companies, and its resilience in the face of overwhelming odds, that some overarching notion may succeed in corralling its ephemeral spirit. Nothing, because to a large extent, the madness of the past few years has yielded to a sobering reality: that fundamentals matter, that the surface enthusiasm of the freshly-minted MBA's and their easily-impressed elders could never substitute for wisdom, experience, knowledge of the ups and downs of business cycles, battle-hardened testing and a sense that awaiting occasions is not a bad thing. In such a world, Southern California has more than earned its stripes - it remains stubbornly invulnerable to the vicissitudes of the public markets (a position of strength in the new world); it has grappled with, and made good beginnings toward, the creation of communities of interest through a difficult geography; it continues to re-create itself even as the rest of the world, ignorant of and ignoring its progress, now licks its wounds in continuation of that neglect; and it has killer weather. Need we say more? So, lets not expect any lavish praise. It could be worse, of course. They could pay much attention to us, come here in hordes, price us at San Francisco rates, instill in us a New York 'tude, draw us into a mind-numbing discussion about the next big thing and give us the mantle of a modern day Mammon. And all the while we'd be screaming to get out from under such a branding iron, so that we could grab the last sweet smell of smog and the beach before the end of another typical day in Paradise. Coming
this fall from larta: larta
will premiere its latest regional research report this fall, the
Southern California Technology Innovation Index 2002, an
update to the 2001
report which compared the growth and activity of the region's
technology industry compared to other areas. An economic benchmark
for the Southern California region, with hard data derived from
various statistical indicators, such as numbers of companies and
employees, educational resources, and investments, the new index
will include both updated numbers and new sections on Santa Barbara
and New York, as well as in-depth policy analysis. |
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