[Infowarrior] - Is Silicon Valley Focusing Too Much On Consumer Tech?

[Richard Forno]

(I agree.....Silicon Valley has lost its focus.  The "next big thing" that changes the world in the same way as the Internet is ..... what?  Another social networking platform?  Yaaawwwwwwn.   -rick)

Is Silicon Valley Focusing Too Much On Consumer Tech?

By Vinnie Mirchandani Aug. 17, 2010, 4:59pm PDT No Comments

http://gigaom.com/2010/08/17/is-silicon-valley-focusing-too-much-on-consumer-tech/

I would rather compete with Sony than compete in another product category with Microsoft.

Steve Jobs said that to Time magazine soon after launching the iPod  in 2001. We didn’t pay much attention back then; after all, Apple was considered a dying vendor. But a decade later, the statement reads as prophetic. It signaled the start of a trend Gartner would later call “consumerization of technology,” or “the growing practice of introducing new technologies into consumer markets prior to industrial markets.”

Of course, it wasn’t just Apple; Google, Facebook, and a wide range of mobile, GPS, gaming, entertainment and social startups all have contributed to the scenario where consumers in many markets have better technologies than corporate employees. Indeed, if Cardinal Richelieu were alive today he would be tempted to write “The pen den is mightier than the sword board.” Silicon Valley has been in the middle of all this glorious empowerment of the consumer.

A decade later, though, the consumer focus means the antenna problems of the iPhone 4 or privacy flip-flops at Facebook dominate conversation. This when the “Grand Challenges” facing the world continue to mount.

Don’t get me wrong; the Valley obviously does more than just consumer tech. In a recently published book, I showcase Kleiner’s cleantech portfolio companies like Bloom Energy and Silver Spring Networks, cloud vendors like salesforce.com, Netsuite and Workday, genome-focused firms like 23andMe, and many other Valley companies.

But the overriding contemporary image of the Valley is it is focused on “light” innovation. It’s gone Hollywood: focused on the glitz and the superficial, maybe because that’s where the media focus is. Valley-based new media, and bloggers and even older media covering tech like the New York Times and Fortune mostly write about consumer tech. It could be because the grown-up Valley companies like HP and Oracle aren’t innovating much in the enterprise space. It could be because Valley VCs have given way to “super-seed” funds that parcel out much smaller rounds, and by definition, fund “lighter” innovation.

In the meantime, more complex innovation has been moving elsewhere. The book describes a number of technologies coming out of GE. A GE executive is quoted as saying:

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http://gigaom.com/2010/08/17/is-silicon-valley-focusing-too-much-on-consumer-tech/