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Even as Silicon Valley was still in its infancy, a group of organizations including Bell, MCI, GM, and others hired Fred Terman from Stanford to make NJ more li
by Akarnani 9y ago
Even as Silicon Valley was still in its infancy, a group of organizations including Bell, MCI, GM, and others hired Fred Terman from Stanford to make NJ more like what Silicon Valley (NJ and SV share a ton of similarities, i did a tedx talk about it below [1]) but Terman was unsuccessful. He pointed to how Princeton was not focused enough on applied science the way Stanford was. East coast politics and stock market downturn also hindered his efforts.
Also, don't forget Fort Monmouth, which was across the county, employed an equal number of scientists and was responsible for nearly as many inventions as Bell Labs (much classified). It was the home of the Army's software and signal operations. Just like Silicon Valley, the military kickstarted the world's most productive innovation cores.
New Jersey had (and continues to have) the richest concentration of scientists in the United States. Monmouth County and the Princeton had, for a very long time, the kind of serendipity that makes Silicon Valley so special—that you can walk down the street and bump into a bunch of engineers and VCs while walking your dog and strike up a conversation.
State politics in NJ, unfortunately, doesn't nurture these institutions and the ecosystem has grown weaker. It breaks my heart that Bell Labs is a mall and Fort Monmouth lays fallow when it should be bid out to universities to become the Stanford of the East—the applied sciences university that Fred Terman dreamed about.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2LbuqoNGGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b2LbuqoNGGI
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Monmouth https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Monmouth
[3] http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/sep/06/choose-new-jersey/new-jersey-leads-world-number-scientists-engineers/ http://www.politifact.com/new-jersey/statements/2012/sep/06/...
- mholmes680 9y agoFWIW, I had some good experiences at the Princeton Tech meetups a few years ago, if anyone is in that area: https://www.meetup.com/Princeton-Tech/ https://www.meetup.com/Princeton-Tech/
- joshu 9y agoTerman. How did you do research for the talk without learning the spelling?
- Akarnani 9y agothanks for the correction. Long night last night :/
- brightball 9y agoStanford of the East title is taken already. :-) http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/dabo-swinney-turned-clemson-model-program-alabama/story?id=38392932 http://abcnews.go.com/Sports/dabo-swinney-turned-clemson-mod... > Swinney enjoys joshing his close friend David Shaw, the Stanford coach, about how Clemson is "the Stanford of the East Coast and they're the Clemson of the West Coast."
- kough 9y agoThat is a new level of aspirational.
- scholia 9y agoThanks for the YouTube link: I enjoyed your talk.
- Akarnani 9y agoThank you, you've made my day!
- scholia 9y agoMany moons ago, I wrote a story for Red Herring magazine(I think) about European attempts to create their own versions of the Valley, so I'd thought about some of the issues. If I had to redo it now, your talk would make it a better article ;-)
- TarpitCarnivore 9y agoThe old Bell Labs building is, finally, under a revitalization and reuse of the workspace called Bell Works (http://bell.works/neighborhood/ http://bell.works/neighborhood/). Based on job listings it seems NVIDIA's AI/Autonomous driving is happening there. As someone who lives close by, but commutes to NYC, I can only hope to see more big name companies move in. As for Fort Monmouth, pretty much all the offices were moved to Aberdeen as part of the last BRAC. As you stated there was a lot of work being done there related to communications & intelligence (I believe a lot of GPS work was out of there). It was a real hit to the local community when it shut down since it happened in the middle of the housing crisis. A lot of families were forced to short sale or do long commutes. The space is finally up purchase, but sadly it will be getting used to build more condos & a shopping center. There were rumors of Monmouth University and Rutgers wanting to get access to the space but were declined.
- mholmes680 9y agoBut it'll be called Freedom Pointe now, so it has to be good: http://www.njbiz.com/article/20170606/NJBIZ01/170609904/paramount-realty-has-big-plans-for-freedom-pointe-at-former-fort-monmouth http://www.njbiz.com/article/20170606/NJBIZ01/170609904/para...
- Animats 9y agoIt looks like a low-end flea market. The strings of bare lightbulbs are too much.