Making it safe to work on risky things
This summary from PeterDiamandis.com is spot on.
“the magic of Silicon Valley is not in fostering risk-taking, but instead in making it safe to work on risky things.”
— Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life and now CEO of High Fidelity
Most people I work with are either talking about how to innovate or racing after the next Innovation in their business or startup, while forgetting that you need to create a safe environment to innovate and prove through actions that failure is learning and it’s ok. Easy to say, not so easy to embed in your culture.
As Peter writes in his latest update:
My friend Philip Rosedale, the creator of Second Life and now CEO of High Fidelity, spent some time investigating why the Bay Area in particular has become such a hub for technology and innovation.
As Rosedale explains, “I think the magic of Silicon Valley is not in fostering risk-taking, but instead in making it safe to work on risky things. There are two things happening in Silicon Valley that are qualitatively different anywhere else.”
Those things are:
- The sheer density of tech “founders per capita” is 10 times greater than the norm for other cities (see figure below).
- There is a far greater level of information sharing between entrepreneurs.
Image: San Francisco has about twice the density of the next-highest city (Boston), and about five times the density of New York.
