Global Tech Hubs and Innovation Geography

Silicon Valley's origins trace to physicist William Shockley, who founded Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory in Mountain View, California, in 1956 after co-inventing the transistor at Bell Labs. His difficult management style drove eight of his own researchers — later nicknamed the "Traitorous Eight" — to resign in 1957 and found Fairchild Semiconductor, whose alumni went on to found Intel in 1968 (Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore) and dozens of other firms collectively known as the "Fairchildren." Stanford University's dean of engineering, Frederick Terman, encouraged this ecosystem by establishing the Stanford Industrial Park in 1951, leasing university land to technology companies including Hewlett-Packard, founded in a nearby garage in 1939 by Stanford graduates William Hewlett and David Packard.