Silicon Valley: a parableWritten by Janet K. Ilacqua
We have all heard about “Silicon Valley” miracle. Not long ago, Silicon Valley found itself at centre of world, a job- and money-making machine fueled by popularity of Internet and technological innovation. Those days are a distant memory now. Now, Center of World has become a technological Rust Belt. The streets, once throbbing with energy, are empty and quiet. Empty new buildings stand like bleached mausoleums in sun with big, indiscreet "AVAILABLE" signs slapped on them. A full 20% of valley’s jobs have been lost since March 2001 and hi-tech jobs continued to be lost as companies downsize or outsource jobs to Asia. No one in Valley can figure what to do to bring back golden era. However, most people not local to area are unaware of previous history of this area. The past 200 years have been tragic one of genocide, environmental destruction, greed, trickery, and exploitation. In 1776, at time of their first contact with Spanish explorers originally who were looking for gold, Santa Clara Valley was an untouched Eden with maybe 10,000 Ohlone Indians. By 1830, peaceful, basket-weaving peoples who had been living there for over 10,000 years had completely disappeared, killed off by epidemics and mission system. In 1848, land, originally part of Mexico, became part of United States. Americans, many of whom were failed gold-seekers from mother lode, started to pour in and acquired Mexican cattle ranches, often through force and trickery. The rich alluvial soil—some of best in world-- proved ideal for orchards. The Valley during spring was a canopy of white blossoms—“The Valley of Heart’s Delight.” An orchard of another type grew around seeds planted by William Hewlett, David Packard, Fred Terman, and other researchers at Stanford University. Today, Hewlett-Packard is one of world's largest producers of computers and electronic measuring devices and equipment. The names of branches of tree are familiar: Stanford Industrial Park, Varian, Apple Computers, Intel, Yahoo, CISCO, Netscape, etc. Creativity leads to innovation, and innovation leads to prosperity. Prosperity attracts restless, bright, often unscrupulous people, with often troubled and unhappy pasts, from all parts of world. The old-time farmers sell their farms off for a king’s ransom and move. The orchards were bulldozed to make room for subdivisions and industrial parks.
| | The new ways to do the Business: MBA or CIO?Written by J.C.Melo
The new ways to do business: MBA or CIO?By J.C.Melo The old and standard business administration concepts included in any current MBA program are very important, but today companies are very different. This new situation strong demands a new MBA program including General Control Theory, control engineering, new business technologies, Management by Exception concept automated by computer systems, Feedback Control System and several other subjects like Internet Marketing & Sales. As we know CIO is abbreviation of "Chief Information Officer" and is a new professional, usually between CEO and other Directors including IT Director. He don't replace IT Director, with exception in small companies. A CIO Chief Information Officer has entrepreneurial experience and at same time technical experience in Information Technologies. The entrepreneur usually has only entrepreneurial experience and IT manager has only on technical matters. However business is more and more information system and information system is more and more business.
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