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Emerging from

the Valley

Amit Sridharan comments on how anti-fragility deeply underpins the
entrepreneurship spirit in Silicon Valley.

he Silicon Valley as we know it today was once a a part-time teaching position at Stanford instead. As his health
rural economy. It was Fred Terman, the Stanford recovered, he grew to become a full-time professor and later
Provost, also known as the ‘Father of Silicon Valley,’ on, even the Dean of the engineering school. Terman pushed
who built the real base for the hi-tech industry in the Stanford’s reputation to become a military technology
TWest. In those days, Terman recalled, “a serious UHVRXUFH ULJKW XS WKHUH ZLWK +DUYDUG DQG 0,7
young engineer had to go back east to put spit and polish on +H IRFXVHG RQ SXVKLQJ FROOHDJXHV DQG VWXGHQWV WR
his education.” Terman earned a Ph.D. in 1924 at MIT and commercialize their ideas, inspiring students to start their own
planned to join the faculty at MIT as a new assistant professor. companies. Fred Terman, thus led the rebels who moved into
But as he developed a serious case of tuberculosis he spent the barren west, both researchers and entrepreneurs, who
the next year in bed, with sandbags on his chest as there was initially had meager resources but a deep desire to be
QR VSHFLͤF WUHDWPHQW IRU WXEHUFXORVLV DW WKH WLPH +H DFFHSWHG successful. And before educational institutions saw deep

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