Silicon Valley and the hippies

What was special about Florence during the Renaissance and what is special about Silicon Valley today? Something very simple: they value crazy ideas.

They say that if you had lived in the Renaissance and hadn't known Florence, you would have missed that great era. Today there is a region, 40 minutes south of San Francisco and touching the north of Los Angeles, called SILICON VALLEY. In this place, advances have been made such as:

• Internet
• The personal computer
• Social networks: Twitter, Instagram, Facebook (although created at Harvard, it was valued and driven in Silicon Valley, while in New York it seemed crazy)
• The electric car, Tesla
• Self-driving cars

But, what was special about Florence and what is special about Silicon Valley today? Something very simple: they value crazy ideas. The curious thing is that Silicon Valley is where the hippie movement took place, a generation so crazy that:

• Opposed the Vietnam War
• Sought to change the world
• And even influenced the Beatles

But what do I mean when I say they value crazy ideas? Yes... For example, they value the idea of wanting to change the world and are willing to invest in ideas that can achieve it, even if there is a risk of failure. Yes... They also value the idea of an employee telling the owner that they want to leave to start a venture, and the boss congratulating them and proposing to invest in their company because they want to diversify the risk. Yes... They value giving millions to young people to try ideas that are at risk of failure but that could be a stroke of luck and one day form a company that is publicly traded. When I had the opportunity to study in Silicon Valley, I heard a phrase from Miguel Casillas, founder of SV Links, that explains it all: "Even people who fall in failure are further ahead than those who never dared to try."