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The editors at Best Computer Science Degrees decided to research the topic of:
Is Silicon Valley Preaching to the Choir
- In the hotbed of innovation, many ideas don't have markets beyond the Bay Area.
- Leading to the thought that the valley advances more and more, while the rest of the country lags behind.
A unique market
- Silicon Valley Stats:
- Valley Average annual earnings: $86,540[1]
- Avg. per household for the rest of the U.S.: $50,502 [2]
- Avg free school lunches
- Silicon Valley: 31%
- Rest of California: 49%
- Silicon Valley: 3 million people registered 12% of the nation's patents [1]
- That means the remaining 311 million Americans accounted for the remaining 88%
- Avg patents per capita ratio:
- Silicon Valley: 1 to 225
- Rest of the U.S.: 1 to 3186
- You're 15 times more likely to patent an idea if you live in the Valley
But not every idea can be a game changer
Silicon specific ideas
- BlackJet offers sharable private jets at a moment's notice[1][3]
- You can even reserve a jet from your phone with a handy app
- If you can front the $7,000 price tag for a cross country trip
- Twist is an app that allows you to tell people you are on your way.[4][1]
- An icon plots your present location so a friend can see how many blocks away you are
- Definitely not an app for anyone who wants to unplug now and then
- Google's driverless cars have logged more than 300,000 miles of driving[5]
- But with a price tag of $225,000 for the equipment (car not included),
- Decades of road safety legislation requiring an attentive and sober driver at the controls to overturn,
- And only one driverless car registered outside the state of California,
- It's going to be a while before anyone but Googlers are trying these out.
- And not one, but four car reserving apps [6]
- With Uber and InstantCab handling cab reservations
- And Lyft and Sidecar crowdsourcing ride sharing
- You can't exactly sell your car likeUber's founder, Naval Ravikant, throughout much of the U.S.
- But don't worry, pretty soon you too can have the truly innovative learning and digital thermostat.[7]
- Nest Labs came up with this earth shattering invention with the help of many ex-google, apple, and Microsoft engineers, including Apple's previous Chief intellectual property officer
- Because it really was such a hassle to change the thermostat back in the olden days, right?
- As well as social networks for your dog, cat, or even hamster[8][9]
- At dogster, catster, and hamsterer (No, this is not a bad joke)
- And, last but not least, photo sharing apps that help you to do exactly what you can do on instagram
- like Color, where you can "share photos and videos with friends on facebook" [10]
Not everyone is an entrepreneur, nor should they be. While many true and incredibly important innovations have come out of the valley, many innovations solve fake problems, and only cater to an inventor's technophile friends, not the world at large.
- [citations]
- http://www.siliconvalleycf.org/docs/2012-jv-index.pdf
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Household_income_in_the_United_States
- http://www.wired.com/business/2012/10/blackjet/
- http://www.twist.com/
- http://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21576224-one-day-every-car-may-come-invisible-chauffeur-look-no-hands
- http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/07/uber-lower-uberx-fares/
- http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/04/12/apples-former-patent-chief-joins-nest-labs/
- http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/05/20/disruptions-a-beacon-to-silicon-valley-from-a-start-up-for-children/
- http://yooryoo.com/2008/11/is-it-real-14-is-hamsterster-really-a-social-network-for-your-hamster/
- http://www.color.com/
