Straight From Silicon Valley, California- The Global Technology & Innovation Hub

By Lakshman Sundar

San Jose, Capital Of Silicon Valley.        

Apple’s Spectacular Campus At Cupertino

The Sun may come almost last to west coast of the US, but the future always comes first and foremost to Silicon Valley in northern California. The famous adage here ls that tomorrow comes today itself! The mottos of Silicon Valley are to innovate (new technology), create (new products), accumulate (new customers), and proliferate (to new markets).  I am fortunate to visit this hip and happening place on earth and I toured all nodes and cities in this region in the past three weeks.  To The outside world, the US seems to be very busy but inside it is quiet, calm, and orderly. Time passes slowly. Americans have immense patience.

Silicon Valley is a global center for high technology and innovation. Previously known as Santa Clara Valley in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, "Silicon Valley" refers to the area in which high-tech business and it also serves as a general metonym for California's high-tech business sector. It covers an area of 1, 854 square miles (bigger than Goa) and it is the home of over three million people.

Silicon Valley derives its name from the silicon used in transistors and computer chips, pioneered in the region in the 20th century.  The San Francisco Bay Area commonly known as Silicon Valley has a GDP of $840 billion. If this region were a country, it would be the 18th largest global economy larger than the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, and Switzerland!  

San Jose is the Capital of Silicon Valley and home to over 6,600 tech companies including Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Attari, Canon, Cisco, Dell, Electronic Arts, eBay, Facebook, Google, Groupon, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Intel, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Mitsubishi, Mozilla, Netflix, Nokia, Nvidia, Oracle, Panasonic, PayPal, Pixar, Sun Power and Tesla, TiVo. Twitter (Now X) WhatsApp, and Yahoo and many more. Silicon Valley has more than 40,000’ different startups.

Silicon Valley includes cities of Atherton, Campell, Cupertino, Gilroy, Los Altos, Los Gatos, Menlo Park, Milpitas, Morgan Hill, Mountain View, Palo Alto, Redwood City, Santa Clara, San Jose, Saratoga, and Sunny Vale. 

 Steve Jobs Theater At Apple Campus      

 The Writer At Oracle Campus, Santa Clara  

The Standford University ( SU) played a big role in the emergence of Silicon Valley, both through its academic programs and through its real investments into the local tech ecosystem, such as with the Standford Research Park. 

Talent Rules

The San Francisco Bay Area has the largest concentration of high tech companies in the U.S. at 387,000 high-tech jobs, of which Silicon Valley accounts for 225,300 high-tech jobs. Silicon Valley has the highest concentration of high-tech workers of any metropolitan area, with 286 out of every 1,000 private-sector workers. It has the highest average high-tech salary in the United States at $144,800. Largely a result of the high technology Silicon Valley has the most millionaires and the most billionaires in the United States per capita. Over time , the venture capital ecosystem is also growing.

The Silicon Valley includes many colleges and universities including Stanford University, a private university, and the University of California, Berkeley, a public university. Both are world-leading institutions

The Tech Interactive (formerly The Tech Museum of Innovation in San Jose , commonly known as The Tech) is a science and technology center that offers hands-on activities, labs, design challenges and other STEAM education resources.

Apple’s Huge Campus

We went around the spectacular campus of Apple which is 4,805 feet in circumference, with a diameter of 1,512 feet. The main circular building of Apple’s 175-acre campus is spread across a huge 2.8 million square feet which equals to more than 40 standard football fields!  The campus has around 12,000 employees, 2,000 parking spaces in the subterranean parking garage, 1,000 bikes on the campus for employees to get around, with miles of cycling and jogging trails all, seven cafés, with the largest being a three-level café for 3,000 sitting people.

There are 9,000 trees on the Apple Park Campus, of 309 varieties of indigenous types. The Steve Jobs Theater named after the co-founder and former CEO of Apple, located atop a hill on the campus has an underground, 1,000-seat auditorium intended for Apple product launches and press meets.

Indian Footprints

Indian-origin people account for over 1% of the US population and 6% of Silicon Valley's workforce - and yet are disproportionately represented in the top brass. Over 1,000 Indians have founded Silicon Valley companies, and those companies have a total value of "more than $40 billion  and 40% of all start-up companies include Indian Americans on staff. There are over 200,000 Indians in and around thriving Silicon Valley.

Yes, there are many Hindu temples in this region and I visited three of them and offered prayers. 

There are several Indian restaurants in Silicon Valley serving the best Indian food in San Francisco Bay Area. It is one of the reasons why Silicon Valley is home to a great number of Indians in California.  At one road near Apple Inc there are more than 20 Indian restaurants posing a dilemma as to which you should go!

The Writer Is A Navi Mumbai Based PR Consultant & Freelance Journalist Currently Visiting The United States.