An interesting point when it comes to hard industry but what does it mean when it comes to more intellectual property or service based industry. It could be argued that the source of wealth, in those cases, is probably distributed around denser, more populated areas… places like, well, like NYC

Actually, living in Brooklyn or Queens is probably equivalent cost to living in Oakland or some parts of SF so the cost of living issue does not seem to be much of an impediment.

Meanwhile it’s still the case that most industries are heavily connected to NYC money if they are large and profitable, i.e. exploitable by Wall Street. Any company that wants to IPO, expand, merge, etc. will go through half a dozen NYC financial and legal institutions.

There is no doubt in my mind of the uniqueness of the valley and I find that both the valley and the tri-state area have different advantages. The point I’m trying to make is that technology innovation is no longer just a local thing and any discussion of alley vs. valley is simply ridiculous. On a global stage, one could argue that increasingly, innovation comes from locations outside the valley: Skype being but one example.

Ultimately, discussion about the supremacy of one location over another are not as fruitful as discussion of what’s new. And yet, the old discussion always seems to show up again (could it be because late August, early September is a slow news time?) so I’m trying to put things in context

As far as New York’s supremacy in the money business… Well, I think that too is beginning to be challenged. Other financial centers like London and Honk Kong are starting to rise and who knows whether New York will manage to stay on top. It might remain an important player in that industry (as it is in many other industries) but I suspect that the heyday of the New York financial sector may be behind us…

Nice to revisit an old question. I wouldn’t take issue with what you’re suggesting. NYC is doubtless the mother of diversity/diversification in the sense of the enormity of the array of opportunities in business and the arts. Where else could even dream of comparing with what you can find there. Note: National Geographic just reported that a street in Queens may have the a more diverse collection of human beings (in terms of DNA array) than any other place on the planet.

What I would offer is a cultural observation about the silicon valley that I believe makes it unique in its own right. For a set of historically interesting reasons the Bay Area has retained much more of a culture of the wide open frontier of a metaphorical “gold rush” environment, albeit highly evolved, than any other metropolitan area. As a result, this quintessentially western, frontier, boom and bust culture attracts the risk takers, the ingenious business creators and pulls on a certain set of entrepreneurial energies of dreamers from everywhere. The Bay Area of California, despite the laid back, liberal reputation is an intensely hard working and hungry, competitive world. And, like the gold rush mentality of the past, it is a place where the notion of abundance is more prevalent than the scarcity notions of the zero-sum game belief in scarcity that seems to permeate much of the rest of the globe.

Add to this the presence of Stanford and Berkeley (and the med school UCSF); definitely among the more fascinating, magnetic universities in the world — so close together they constantly form an ever changing force field of change, opportunity, and critical mass of raw intellectual strength.

The Bay Area will not soon take anything much away from New York (which is what? — four or ten times as big as the San Francisco environs?). But the Golden Gate is an unrivaled link to Asia generally and China/Japan/Korea particularly. It will be great to see New York and California learn to dance together — so to speak. And L.A.- influential as it is — is a sun-drenched desert culture somehow obsessed with slick self image. The Bay Area is never as happy with itself as it is obsessed with changing the world. Maybe it’s got another 25 years of power and influence, maybe not. But I don’t see computer techies, Internet techies, biology techies, green techies, or social network techies caring or trying to unsettle or unseat the one and only capital of the planet where the master’s of the universe run everything. We all know only New York money and power brokers are able to perform without fail… okay, 2008 was slightly worrying… but hardly anyone noticed it seems.

bill