The New Geography of Innovation summary

If China looks like the hyperactive new star of tech deployment, Silicon Valley is the original template it learned from and now competes against. Silicon Valley, a relatively small stretch of Northern California, has produced an astonishing share of the world’s most valuable technology companies and billionaire founders. It draws in a huge slice of US venture capital and generates an economy that rivals whole countries. It’s the place other regions measure themselves against when they claim to be a serious tech hub, and that status did not come about by accident.

The story begins with Stanford University, in an era when the surrounding area was still largely agricultural. Lacking the prestige and funding of older East Coast universities, its leaders made a clear bet: instead of spreading resources thinly, they pushed hard into selected fields in science and engineering. At the same time, they moved aggressively to tap into the surge of postwar US defense spending, positioning the university as a key contractor for advanced research. That steady flow of federal money built up labs, attracted top scientists, and anchored a growing cluster of high-tech firms around the campus.

For years, Europe seemed like an observer in the global tech race, while the United States and China grabbed most of the attention. The rise of DeepMind, launched in London in 2010, shifted that picture. At the time, the UK had only a small number of billion-dollar tech firms and London was better known for finance than for frontier software, so early backing for the startup came mainly from overseas investors comfortable betting on long-shot AI research.

Google’s acquisition of DeepMind in 2014 showed that cutting-edge AI could emerge from London, but it also exposed Europe’s weaknesses. Many in the UK later felt that such an important lab had been sold too early and too cheaply, yet without access to deep capital and massive computing resources, it’s unclear whether the company could have grown at all. The same ecosystem that produced world-class research had not yet built the funding and infrastructure to sustain it independently.

Faced with few natural resources and a tiny domestic market, Singapore chose to compete by making technology part of its basic infrastructure – on the same level as ports, housing, and defense. 

This mindset grew out of insecurity. After separation from Malaysia in the 1960s, the country had almost no natural resources and a very small population. So, its leaders set out to make it the most reliable place in Asia to do business. Over time, clean administration, English law, and a welcoming stance to multinationals created a dense cluster of global firms and research institutes that gave it something to build on.

If you want to understand who will lead the next wave of technology, follow the people, not the patents. Few places make that clearer than Canada, where a relatively small scientific community and a handful of standout founders have pulled the country into the heart of the artificial intelligence boom. Many of the key figures behind modern AI research in Toronto, Montreal, and Edmonton were born elsewhere, and a large share of headline founders in Canadian tech are also first-generation immigrants.

That’s not an accident. Canada has spent decades treating immigration policy as an economic development tool. It admits a high number of newcomers for its size, filters applications through a points system that rewards education and skills, and has designed work permits that make it relatively easy for tech workers to relocate. Programs have even targeted frustrated talent in the United States, while universities have become magnets for international students who often aim to stay and build their careers there.