Why The Valley Is What It Is (from a Kiwi perspective)

On a recent visit to Cologne in Germany, I was able to meet up with a few budding entrepreneurs in Germany. One of them, a 27 year old MBA grad was working on a consulting startup. We instantly clicked due to our mutual interests of startups, but also good trance music. As the conversation progressed, he couldn’t help but ask about bringing up the topic of “business models” and “business plans”.

Now the terms “business model” and “business plan” are not so much alien words, but rather words which have been phased out of my vocabulary since coming to Silicon Valley from New Zealand. As he continued talking of different business models developed by different academics, I couldn’t help but think of how distant the concepts in the Valley for a successful startup are from this budding German entrepreneur’s.

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The Revolution of Apple Inc.

Not many years ago, Apple was struggling in its long standing competition with Microsoft in the technology industry. Many people talked about Microsoft as being a monopoly in the computer industry. However, things have changed.

With the invention of the iPod, a couple years back, Apple was able to increase not only its customers but its revenue. Apple was then able to keep these customers by constantly making innovative products such as the iTouch, iPhone, and MacBook Pro. Even though, Apple has been around for decades , only in recent years is it now giving Microsoft a strong competition in the computer industry. As a result, this past year, Apple was able to survive the economic recession and still earn an overall profit for their annual revenue while Microsoft was not.

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Apple's New Operating System

Apple launched a new Operating System called iPhone OS 4.0 on April 8th. OS 4.0 includes tools for multitasking and folder organization that were identified the iPhone’s main drawbacks. Apple also added iPad’s popular function, iBooks and developed a more sophisticated email system. OS 4.0 concentrates on business management tools to target the enterprise market as well. The ‘Game Center’ tool for social game network has been created to compete with Window Phone 7’s breakthrough development of ‘Game Hub’ that had integrated Xbox Live into a mobile system.

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Digital natives--Our generation

So what sets our generation, the generation born between 1980 and 2000, apart from those who were born in the periods before us? Our generation, the “Net generation” or the "Digital Natives" are by far the most digitally savvy group of individuals who have been progressively transformed the traditional foundations of communication, marketing, business and even education. Digital capabilities have given rise to a new consumer who is more or less dependent on the internet with an immediate demand for access, speed and information.

Digital natives have found new outlets of expressions. John Palfrey and Urs Gasser the authors of “Born Digital” have stated that through these new portals of communication has now entered a realm that is essentially free of boundaries. Some feel that through this gap and new rise in digitalization, education systems will benefit by taking a seat and learning how this new generation interacts and will apply it to a new system of learning.

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