I need a writer. I have this book I’ve written. Which means it needs a real writer to make it readable. Send me your leads. Here is the summary I worked on for my agent. See what I mean? I need a real writer:
SILICON VALLEY NATION (working title) articulates the core business ideas that have led to success in Silicon Valley and makes them applicable to other organizations. Through examples and first person experiences, SILICON VALLEY NATION provides senior management and decision-makers with a new lens through which to view their challenges. The book is organized around five Silicon Valley truisms that organizational leaders can adapt for their own uses.
SILICON VALLEY NATION describes Silicon Valley efforts, but it also reframes the successful efforts of large companies. These firms (sometimes inadvertently) replicate the actions of start-ups, creating economic value beyond one geographic valley (that really is neither based on “silicon” nor a “valley”).
We need more economic value. America is struggling to retain its economic leadership in the face of threats from China, India, even Brazil. SILICON VALLEY NATION is about fighting back. In the face of other nations’ faster growth rates and promising futures, Americans are concerned, for the first time, that their children’s generation will have less rather than more.
America’s future destiny — a caricature of the wilting British Empire — is not a foregone conclusion. We are the nation of the gold rush, the telephone, the mass-market automobile, and the computer chip. We invented the internet. We have brands from Apple to Zynga.
Each of those examples has the answer that will keep us preeminent. It’s no longer manufacturing power, military power, or pop-culture power. It’s Renewal Power.
Organizational leaders need SILICON VALLEY NATION — lessons and stories from and for organizations of all sizes. Copy, rip, or steal these, organized in 5 areas:
Own it – People perform better when they own rather than rent, when they are principals rather than agents. Feeling a lack of control is the number one complaint of middle managers. Silicon Valley uses methods beyond stock options, like linked incentives, variable pay, and the end to tacit tenure. So can you.
Do less – Silicon Valley does more with less. Most organizations do less with more. Contracting for services, super-disaggregation, and graduated risk allow Silicon Valley to manage their business relations better than BP manages outsourced oil drilling. Well, that’s a low bar to get over.
Shrink span – The more we have on our plates, the less we pay attention to the details. Silicon Valley uses smaller “span of control” and allows for a lower “care threshold”. Achieve a smaller Span per Attention ratio and get better decisions than can be achieved by the Hewlett Packard board or a Congressman deciding on the Federal budget. Tiers of Span and multiple outside boards are ways to achieve this.
Starve – Silicon Valley organizations, like small mammals, have to work harder to get resources needed for sustenance. A chance of starvation clarifies what needs to be done now. Silicon Valley is built around VCs and start-ups as a risk market for capital, not a monolithic, nearly communistic, centralized planning process. Competitive capital, with multiple sources and the right to starve, eliminates budget inertia.
Risk it – If failure is punished with death, there will be no risk, no innovation, and little responsibility. In Silicon Valley, a failed CEO is MORE likely to get funded by a venture capitalist than a first time CEO. That’s because it’s the lessons learned, not the failures, that are considered. Risk tolerance and risk taking is required to build the next generation of American organization.
SILICON VALLEY NATION is not an academic text. It is not a how-to or twelve step program for recovering re-engineering-aholics. It is an encouragement for the reader to view their situation through a specific lens of Venture Capital and entrepreneurship and improve upon it, bolstered with story-telling and experiences of those who have gone before.