31 March 2005 Blog Home : March 2005 : Permalink
True enough, the Valley can mimic a respectable political language--if only to snag Davos invitations or to keep Washington off its back. In their souls, Valley businesspeople are wild libertarian crazies who want nothing more than to forget the Beltway even exists. The news is full of talk about the great divide between political left and right. Silicon Valley could care less. The axis that counts here is incumbent vs. disrupter.
Incumbents are the bad guys. They are Microsoft, Gray Davis, Hollywood studios, telephone companies, big pharma and Social Security. Disrupters are Google, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Napster, WiFi, biotech and personal savings accounts. Incumbents are big, slow, rude and authoritarian. Disrupters are nimble, new, cute and libertarian.
In order to make this slightly relevant to European readers, and especially to those Europeans who haven't lived in the valley, I'd say this "incumbent" vs "disrupter" idea is how entrepreneurs around the world think - even those entrepreneurs in sclerotic "old" Europe. It is certainly 100% true of the UK entrepreneurs from the flamboyant airline folks like Richard Branson to the boring bosses of ARM. This is what Danny Kruger meant when he said "We plan to introduce a period of creative destruction in the public services." Likewise it is what scares the living daylights out of the French left and why they are so against the EU's Bolkestein directive.