THE NEW GEOGRAPHY OF INNOVATION

Silicon Valley, long seen as the global epicenter of tech magic, has not lost its luster, even as ambitious rivals scramble for the spotlight.

In this brisk, eye-opening survey, technology and business writer Gul examines how and where transformative technologies reach the market, and why innovation flourishes in certain places. His scope is wide: China, South Korea, Singapore, Silicon Valley, Canada, London, and Switzerland, each explored through their cultural and historical contexts. Drawing on interviews with venture capitalists, researchers, and entrepreneurs, Gul investigates what makes a place truly innovative—and why so few places with concentrated entrepreneurship centers have been able to mount a serious challenge to Silicon Valley. Gul writes that “while the world’s older industrial economies might have looked very different, its newer tech economies are strikingly similar and becoming even more similar over time.” He argues that “the contest is not between different models but different intensities of the same model.” Whether organized as “rainforests” or “farms”—“farms are controlled systems where inputs and outputs are predetermined” and “rainforests are a lot more chaotic”—all seek to bring ideas to market quickly. Among the author’s sharpest insights: Many nations have invested heavily in AI, but the U.S. remains dominant due to early momentum and vast stores of training data. Immigration, he shows, is also tightly linked to innovation. Canada’s emergence as an AI powerhouse is driven in part by three cutting-edge researchers—each an immigrant—while China’s AI strategy is shaped largely by domestic talent, producing rapid advances but limited external diversity. Still, China and the U.S. now compete head-to-head in AI. Gul refutes the notion that permissive social environments inherently generate more innovation, noting, “There’s obviously a China-sized hole in that argument.”

An enjoyable dive into the intricate anatomy of global innovation, from the wildly creative to the coolly efficient.