You should definitely search for the origins of SUN, Yahoo, Google, HP… If somebody says that Silicon Valley has no relationship with Stanford/Berkeley, they should be extradited to the nearby Nevada desert or the middle of Oregon :)

It’s only Indian academic mentality that says that universities and entrepreneurship has no relationship. MIT, Stanford, Princeton, Caltech and Berkeley are part of parcel of American innovation and research. HBS, Sloan, Stanford, Kellog and Wharton are the core parts of the mega Fortune 500 companies. And Yale, Princeton and Harvard are core of American politics - Congress & Oval Office.

One thing that India failed is the lack of imagination to associate our educational system with the rest of the society.

It seems as though your post is suggesting that the lack of world-class institutions of higher learning is the only, or predominant reason, why it is improbable that the next Google will come from India. I’d appreciate it if you could clarify that point. Thanks.

On the whole, this is a great blog. Keep up the good work!

It just requires some guts and policy change from Indian govt - most importantly with respect to reservation. If it comes to the point where brain is what one requires to enter big institution and not community certificates and backdoor entrances, we could create MIT and Stanford’s within a decade in India.

http://ia.rediff.com/money/2006/dec/09infy.htm

The unique population distributions of 1920 Australia led to Qantas, one of the world’s first airlines…

So what’s unique about India these days?

Finland is sparcely populated, rough terrain. Landlines are costly in such places compared to cell phones. Not surprising that Nokia is Finnish — their domestic requirements gave them the platform to become a global player in mobile technology.

So in a sense, yes, snow is an indirect factor that led to Nokia’s success.

Shall we conclude that snow is a necessary condition for successful cell phone manufacturers?

Microsoft was founded in Albuquerque, New Mexico, btw.

What does Google’s(Ad-ware advovate) innovation in India’s economy or technology have to do with the relevance of the existence of God, or Gods? YES, you’re bright…but not quite “connected.”

Figure of speech, manner of speaking, which may be misunderstood by those who are not quite familiar with the idiomatic forms of the language. Basically, I did not imply that the gods (billions though they are) have anything to do with Google.

Ramki:

I did not even attempt to exhaustively list the conditions for a great economy. I was merely stating one necessary condition for great technology firms such as Google and Yahoo. I did not claim that that condition is sufficient. It is good to distinguish between the necessary and sufficient conditions.

Rekha:

No claim was made about the need for a PhD for starting a world class company. Universities incubate. We should ponder the meaning of the word “incubate”.

Risk taking has something to do with how much wealth one has. Poor people are risk averse. The causality runs from wealth to risk taking rather than the other way around.

Now about college dropouts and successful companies: they are dropouts, not uneducated. I know many PhDs who have not finished their education and many non-PhDs whose education was complete before they were awarded any degrees. The universities have to be there before you can have university dropouts.

Universities provide a wide range of services to the economy, not just PhDs.

Arjun, the universities came before California was a large economy. In 1800s, California was perhaps as rich as some states of India are today. But the people of California gave themselves the Univ of California system, which the states of India don’t appear to be doing. More about this later.

Nanubhai, agreed that you need thousands of kirana stores as much as one needs a handful of Googles. It is not one or the other.

http://www.economist.com/business/displaystory.cfm?story_id=8381987