KKR Innovation Tour. Bay Area, California, USA October 24 th 28 th, 2011

Transcription

1 KKR Innovation Tour Bay Area, California, USA October 24 th 28 th, 2011

2 Overview Program... 3 Meeting Information... 6 Jay Nath, Director of Innovation at San Francisco City Hall... 6 Berkeley University... 7 Innovation Center Denmark... 8 Robert Hawn, Attorney... 9 Institute For The Future Visit to Palo Alto City Hall Patrick Burt, Council member and former mayor to Palo Alto Conference at Stanford: Government 2.0 can technology solve the challenges cities are facing? General introduction to Stanford University (in Danish) Stanford s elder care initiative; ManorCare Health Services Pernille Gjerløv-Juel, PhD Fellow Stanford (In Danish) Claus Abildgren with BrightIdea: How to build innovation processes in your organization Claus Abildgren, Vice President of Sales IDEO John Stoddard San Francisco Bay Area - General information Silicon Valley presentation Practical information for Danish participants (in Danish)... 22

3 Program Monday, October 24 th Time Meeting/Activity Place 9AM Intro to program by Communications Manager Marie Gørvild At Hotel 9.45AM Transportation to San Francisco Department of Technology Approx. 15 min. 10AM-11AM Talk by San Francisco s Director of Innovation, Jay Nath. 1 South Van Ness Ave 2nd Floor Dept of Technology San Francisco, CA AM - Lunch at Zuni 1PM 1PM Transportation to UC Berkeley Approx.1 hour 2PM PM Visit to UC Berkeley and School of Public Health meet with Associate Professor Edmund Seto Meeting room 250 Sutardja Dai Hall UC Berkeley Berkeley CA PM Transportation to San Francisco Approx. 1 hour 7 PM Dinner at restaurant 54 Mint 16 Mint Plaza San Francisco, CA Tuesday October 25 th Time Meeting/Activity Place 8 AM Transportation from San Francisco to Palo Alto. Check in at hotel Cardinal Transportation time approx. 45min 9.40AM 10AM AM 10.30AM 12PM Departure from Cardinal Hotel to Innovation Center Denmark (approx. 10 min.) Intro to Innovation Center Denmark by Communications Manager Talk by Robert Hawn, Structure Law Group; Innovation and entrepreneurship in Silicon Cardinal Hotel 235 Hamilton Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94301, USA Innovation Center Denmark 200 Page Mill Road suite 100, Palo Alto, CA Innovation Center Denmark

4 12.00PM PM 13.15PM- 2PM 2PM 3.30PM Valley Lunch at Restaurant Riace Transportation to Institute for the Future Visit and talk at Institute for the Future: The future of cities, information and inclusion 200 Page Mill Road suite 100, Palo Alto, CA Restaurant Riace 200 Sheridan Avenue, Palo Alto, CA Approx. 20 minutes 124 University Avenue, second floor, Palo Alto, CA PM Transportation to hotel Cardinal Approx. 20 minute 6.30PM Dinner at Nola Restaurant 535 Ramona St, Palo Alto, CA Wednesday October 26 th Time Meeting/Activity Place Morning Sightseeing: Visit the first Apple Store or the Palo Alto at your HP garage in Palo Alto. convenience! 3.15 Meet at Hotel - walk to Palo Alto City Hall Approx.10 min. 4PM 5.30PM 7PM-9PM Visit to Palo Alto City Hall: Meeting with city council member Patrick Burt and city manager James Keene Transportation to Stanford University Conference at Stanford: Government 2.0 Palo Alto City Hall 250 Hamilton Avenue Palo Alto CA Approx. 30 minutes Vidalakis Dining Room Schwab Residential Center Stanford, CA 9PM Transportation to Hotel Cardinal Approx. 15 minutes Thursday October 27 th Time Meeting/Activity Place 9.30 AM Departure from hotel (approx. 30minutes) Cardinal Hotel 235 Hamilton Avenue Palo Alto, CA 94301, USA 10AM-12PM ManorCare Health Visit to Stanford s elder care initiative; Services1150 Tilton ManorCare Health Services Drive Sunnyvale, CA PM Transportation to Stanford Approx 30 min

5 12.30PM PM- 1.45PM 2.15 PM- 3.30PM 4PM-5PM 7PM Lunch at Stanford Guided tour of tanford Campus Talk at Stanford University by Pernille Gjerløv-Juel, PHD fellow at SCANCOR: The Danish entrepreneur culture Transportation to Hotel Cardinal Stanford University School of Education /Cubberley Room Lasuen Mall, Stanford Univeristy CA Approx. 20 minutes 520 Cowper Street Palo Alto, CA , United States (650) Friday, October 28 th Time Meeting/Activity Place 9.30 AM Departure from hotel Cardinal Hotel 235 Hamilton Avenue Palo Alto, CA AM 12PM 12PM PM Talk by Claus Abildgren, BrightIdea; How to build innovation processes in your organization Talk by Uffe Steiner Jensen: Innovation in the city of Fredericia Innovation Center Denmark 200 Page Mill Road suite 100, Palo Alto, CA Innovation Center Denmark 200 Page Mill Road suite 100, Palo Alto, CA PM- Lunch at California Ave 2.30PM 2.30PM Transportation to IDEO Transportation approx. 20 min. 3PM- 5PM Visit to IDEO presentation by John Stoddard IDEO 100 Forest Ave Palo Alto, CA 94301

6 5 PM End of program 7PM Dinner at Restaurant Pampas 529 Alma Street Palo Alto, CA Meeting Information Jay Nath, Director of Innovation at San Francisco City Hall Talk: San Francisco s Innovative initiatives Jay Nath joined the City & County of San Francisco in September 2006 as Director of CRM where he successfully deployed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software enterprise-wide. The technology has played a critical role in managing over 8 million calls and nearly a 1 million requests for service through the SF 311 service. In 2007 he established the City s first Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) deployment which serves as a real-time bi-directional communication hub managing millions of messages. In his more recent role as Director of Innovation he led an effort to make San Francisco the first large city in the nation to use Twitter as a new channel for taking public requests. This idea soon led to an effort to establish an international standard for 311 services allowing interoperability with third-party applications. As a result there are now dozens of apps available and many more in the pipeline. He is now focused on growing adoption of Open311. His efforts have yielded two large players, Lagan and Microsoft partner ISC to adopt Open311. See interview with Jay Nath; City of San Francisco s Innovative Initiatives In 2009, Jay Nath established the nation s first open source software policy for city government, and in 2010 Mr. Nath authored Open Data Legislation requiring City departments to make all non-confidential datasets under their authority available on

7 DataSF.org, the city s one stop web site for government data. Mr. Nath launched DataSF in August 2009 using open source technology taking only three months from idea to go-live. The initial phase of DataSF includes nearly 200 datasets, from a range of city departments, including Police, Public Works, and the Municipal Transportation Agency. More than 60 software applications have already been created from the City s data and are featured in the DataSF App Showcase. This includes San Francisco Crimespotting, an interactive crime map, EcoFinder, an iphone app that helps residents recycle, and Routesy, an app that helps people find their way around the Bay Area s transit systems. The Open Source and Open Data policy are part of a larger Open Gov initiativebeing led by Jay Nath for the City and County of San Francisco to engage constituents, focused on open data, open participation and open source. Prior to working for the City, Jay Nath worked at SquareTrade, an Internet company in San Francisco where we was a senior product manager. Previously he was a senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers where he started his career after graduating from Cornell in 97. Berkeley University The University of California, Berkeley (also referred to as UC Berkeley, Cal Berkeley, Berkeley, or simply Cal), is a teaching and research university established in 1868 and located in Berkeley, California, USA. Berkeley is the most consistently well ranked university in the world overall as shown by a meta-analysis of subject/departmental data over the last sixteen years from the United States National Research Council, the US News & World Report, and Times Higher Education. Berkeley has the highest number of distinguished graduate programs ranked in the top 10 in their fields by the United States National Research Council. Among other honors, University faculty, alumni, and researchers have won 70 Nobel Prizes. To date, UC Berkeley and its researchers are associated with 6 chemical elements of the periodic table (Californium, Seaborgium, Berkelium, Einsteinium, Fermium, Lawrencium) and Berkeley Lab has discovered 16 chemical elements in total more than any other university in the world.[6] UC Berkeley is the flagship institution of the University of California.[7][8][9][10] The university occupies 6,651 acres (2,692 ha) with the central campus resting on approximately 200 acres (81 ha)[3] in the San Francisco Bay Area. Berkeley offers approximately 300 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in a wide range of disciplines. CITRIS Headquartered at UC Berkeley, CITRIS was founded in 2001 from a desire to see

8 innovative technologies put to practical use in improving quality of life for people. In the organization's own words, "CITRIS was created to 'shorten the pipeline' between world-class laboratory research and the creation of start-ups, larger companies, and whole industries", a mission it seeks to achieve through partnering academicians at UC Santa Cruz, UC Merced, UC Davis, and UC Berkeley with industrial researchers. Intro to Innovation Center Denmark Innovation Center Denmark, Silicon Valley is one of the direct results of the globalization strategy designed by the Danish government in 2006 to help achieve the ambitious objective of becoming one of the leading knowledge based nations in the world by The mission of Innovation Center Denmark is to build bridges between research institutions, companies and capital in Denmark and Silicon Valley. To accelerate the entry of Danish companies into Silicon Valley, promote US investments in Denmark, facilitate research cooperation and provide inspiration to help drive innovation in Denmark. In other words a perfect match for International Center for Innovation at Aalborg University. Two ministries work together at Innovation Center Denmark; the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation. Three teams at Innovation Center Denmarkj The center consists of three teams, 1) from the Danish trade Council working with Danish high tech companies, 2) from Investy in Denmark working with US companies and 3) from Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation working with Californian and Danish R&D environments. The Danish trade Council team helps high tech companies and startups to establish a basic network to build on and can help set up targeted meetings with e.g. venture capitalists, possible future partners and researchers. The Invest in Denmark Team works to attract and sustain US R&D investments in Denmark from large US companies.

9 The R&D team assists with targeted visits to bay area research environments with the aim of future collaboration and partnerships as well as offer local assistance and support setting up joint Danish-Californian research workshops, exchange, etc. Synergy at the center and innovation projects The three teams work together on a daily basis on various ongoing projects as well as some more comprehensive so-called innovation projects, this year Nordic Green and Health Care Van. Nordic Green is a big clean tech conference in Silicon Valley showcasing Danish competences within the CleanTech space. In the fall we will go on 3-week long roadtrip in Northern California with our Danish Health Care Van with the purpose of showcasing Danish competences within healthy living, health it, and drug development and delivery. Robert Hawn, Attorney Talk: Innovation and entrepreneurship in Silicon Valley Bob s practice emphasizes technology start-up companies, with a special emphasis on technology transfer, development, and distribution transactions. He represents companies in the software, semiconductor, internet, wireless, and medical device industries. Bob has led technology transfer and licensing transactions involving company core technologies responsible for generating substantial portions of company revenue, and numerous merger and acquisition transactions and private financings. He also works with a number of multinational companies in their U.S. market entry activities, often migrating those companies into Silicon Valley as part of venture financing transactions. Bob received a BA in Economics with Honors from the University of California at Berkeley in 1980, and was elected into Phi Beta Kappa. He received his JD from the

10 University of California at Davis in 1984, where he served as Assistant Editor on the Law Review, and published in the area of developing country debt relief. Bob maintains an active speaking and publication schedule. He has presented seminars ranging from the use of Cayman Island entities in corporate structuring, to internet-related legal issues. His published articles range from recent high technology legislation to a discussion of agreements in the Software as a Service, or SaaS, industry. His professional activities included involvement with the High Technology Section of the Santa Clara County Bar Association, both as past member and Chair of the Executive Committee, and as past co-chair of the Cyberspace Law Committee of the Business Law Section of the State Bar of California. Bob currently serves on the Executive Committee of the Business Law Section of the State Bar of California. He also serves on the Advisory Committee for Innovation Center Denmark where he coaches Danish companies seeking to enter the U.S. market. Institute For The Future The Institute for the Future (IFTF) is a Palo Alto, California based think tank established in 1968, as a spin-off from the RAND Corporation, to help organizations plan for the long-term future. IFTF was founded by Paul Baran, an early Internet pioneer and co-developer of packet switching, futurist Theodore Jay Gordon, and Delphi method co-inventor Olaf Helmer. After a year in Middletown, Connecticut, the Institute relocated to Silicon Valley, where it has been ever since. During the presidency of Roy Amara ( ), the Institute conducted some of the earliest studies of the impact of the ARPANET on scientific research, and was notable for its research on groupware. The Institute attracted several notable researchers in this period, including astrophysicist and computer scientist Jacques Vallee, sociologist Bob Johansen, and its most consistently mediagenic figure, technology forecaster Paul Saffo. Today, the Institute maintains research programs on the futures of technology, health, and organizations. It publishes a variety of reports and maps, as well as a blog on emerging technologies. Currently, the Institute offers three programs to its

11 clients: the Ten Year Forecast, Technology Horizons and Health Horizons. The clients of the three programs are primarily Fortune 500 companies. When the Institute was founded in 1968, the founders had envisioned working with governments, but over the years most of Institute clients have increasingly been large organizations. Visit to Palo Alto City Hall At Palo Alto City Hall we will be meeting with Patrick Burt, Council member and former mayor to Palo Alto Patrick Burt was elected to public office 2008, where he served as mayor of Palo Alto in Burt is member of High Speed Rail Committee and Finance Committee. Chair, City/School Liaison Committee. Council Service Elected 2008 Elected Mayor, 2010 Member, High Speed Rail Committee, 2010 Member, Finance Committee, 2008 & Chair, 2009 Chair, City/School Liaison Committee Alternate, San Franisquito Creek Joint Power Authority (JPA), Member, 2010 Liaison, Santa Clara County Emergency Preparedness Council, 2009, 2010 Liaison, Palo Alto Emergency Preparedness, 2010 Liaison, CAADA Liaison, Friends of the Children s Museum and Zoo, 2008, 2009 Liaison, Stanford University, 2010 Member, League of California Cities, Peninsula Division, 2010 Member, California Avenue Area Development Association, 2009 Delegate, Santa Clara Valley Transportation-Policy Advisory, 2009 Delegate, Association of Bay Area Governments (ABAG), 2009 Conference at Stanford: Government 2.0 can technology solve the challenges cities are facing? California has more than 4,500 local governments, yet it still often feels ungoverned. Proponents of so-called

12 e-government say technology can change that: the digital world, they argue, offers a better way to connect citizens to government and provide services faster and more efficiently. A new report, "Hear Us Now?," surveys how California governments use technology and proposes ways of measuring the success of their e-government initiatives. April Manatt, principal of April Manatt Consulting and the author of the report; Greg Hermann, senior management analyst for the city of Carlsbad; Tim Bonnemann of San Jose participation company Intellitics, Inc.; Dakin Sloss, executive director of California Common Sense; and David B. Smith, executive director of the National Conference on Citizenship, visit Zócalo to discuss the future of e- government and whether it can solve the challenges facing local communities. General introduction to Stanford University (in Danish) Stanford University er stadig et relativt ungt universitet, grundlagt sidst i 1800-tallet. I 1891 åbnede universitetet dørene for 555 studerende og 15 fakultetsmedlemmer. Stanford er grundlagt af Leland Stanford, der bl.a. var President of the Southern Pacific Railroad og desuden guvenør i Californien i en periode. Universitetet er grundlagt til ære for Leland Stanfords søn Leland Stanford jr. der døde af sygdom i en alder af 16 år. Stanford University rangerer i de sidste fire udgaver af Shanghai University Ranking som det næstbedste universitet i verden (Harvard rangerer som det bedste), og har gennem tiden haft 27 nobelpris vindere. Universitet skiller sig desuden ud fra de fleste andre top-universiteter ved at have alle de klassiske fakulteter. Stanford har således førende grupper inden for praktisk taget alle akademiske discipliner. Universitetet råder over et areal på ca. 32 km 2, og har verdens andet største sammenhængende campus. Fra 2006 til 2007 steg Stanfords formue næsten 22% og udgør nu 17,2 mia. USD (kun overgået af Harvard og Yale med henholdsvis 34,6 og 22,5 mia. USD). Til sammenligning har University of California systemets 10 campusser tilsammen en formue på ca. 8 mia. USD). Stanford University er et relativt lille universitet med ca fastansatte forskere ( faculty ) studerende hvoraf ca er undergraduates og ca er graduate students (master- og ph.d.-studerende). I 2009 blev blot 7% af ansøgerne på Stanfords Undergraduate Program optaget af de optagne var 93% blandt de bedste 10% i deres high-school klasse og 99% blandt de bedste 25%). Stanfords gode økonomi gør dem bl.a. i stand til at opretholde en helt enestående forsker/studerende-ratio. 36% af alle kurser afholdes med klasser på 2-9 personer og ca. 70% af kurser har maksimalt 19 studerende. Stanfords operating budget i er på 3,4 mia USD (excl. capital budgettet for hospital og kliniske services som er 386 mio USD.). Selvom Stanford er et privat

13 universitet udgør offentlig finansiering stadig hovedparten af deres indtægter i konkurrence med resten af landets universiteter. I 2007 modtog Stanford 832,3 mio. USD i gaver og donationer. Dermed er Stanford det universitet i USA der rejser flest penge fra Alumner og andre donorer (40% af alle undergraduate alumner giver gaver til universitetet). Dette vidner om Stanfords stærke Alumni kultur og tætte kontakt til erhverslivet. Denne kontakt er også en resultat af Stanfords enestående succes som innovations- og entrepreneurship dynamo i området. Blandt virksomheder, som Stanford alumner og ansatte har været involveret i, findes navne som Hewlett-Packard Company, ebay, Google, Yahoo,, IDEO, Sun Microsystems og mange mange flere. I Efterkrigstiden var HP bl.a. en af de virksomheder som var med til at konstituere Stanfords forskerpark. Før 1960 var der ca. 40 virksomheder og et areal på ca. 9 km 2. I dag er der mere en 150 virksomheder med ca ansatte i 162 bygninger på et areal der udgør 30 km 2. Dette gør Stanford forskerpark til en af de mest succesrige i verden. Ordliste Faculty Akademiske medarbejdere og fastansatte forskere Undergraduates Studerende på bachelor niveau. I USA indskrives de studerede på et undergraduate program som typisk tager fire år og indenholder en generel introduktion til forskellige akedemiske discipliner. Senere i forløbet kan de studerende vælge at specialisere sig. Graduate Student Studerende på masterniveau eller højere. De studerende indskrives på et graduate program, som eksempelvis Business, Engineering eller Law. I modsætning til den danske definition af en masterstuderende kan en gradute student også godt være PhD studerende. Hvis et center eller en professor på Stanford har en række graduate students tilknyttet, vil der således typisk være tale om PhD Studerende. School betegnelsen school skal oftest forstås som det der på dansk betegnes som fakultet. På Stanford findes der eksempelvis en Law School som svarer til et juridisk fakultet og en School of Humanities and Sciences som indeholder de fleste af de klassiske fag. De enkelte School består typisk af en række departments og udbyder forskellige program indenfor deres akademiske område. Stanford s elder care initiative; ManorCare Health Services Information to follow

14 Pernille Gjerløv-Juel, PhD Fellow Stanford (In Danish) Talk: The Danish entrepreneur culture Pernille Gjerløv-Juel er er PhD på Aalborg Universitet og gæsteforsker på The Scandinavian Consortium for Organizational Research (SCANCOR). Pernilles forskning fokuserer på iværksætterkultur og vækstvirksomheder I Danmark. I 2009 var hun medforfatter på bogen; Jagten på fremtidens nye vækstvirksomheder. Pernille vil under sit oplæg fokusere på data og resultater fra hendes forskningsprojektet der bl.a. viser, at nyetablerede virksomheder bidrager årligt netto med nye job til dansk økonomi, mens ældre virksomheder i gennemsnit siger farvel til flere personer, end de ansætter. Pernille vil også komme ind på karakteristika for den danske iværksætterkultur; De mest succesfulde iværksættere har typisk stor brancheerfaring. Særligt interessante er de såkaldte spin-off-iværksættere, som kommer direkte fra en eksisterende virksomhed i samme branche. Disse iværksættere står bag omkring 25 % af de nye virksomheder, og de har større sandsynlighed for at overleve i længere tid og blive vækstiværksættere. Dvs. iværksættere, der skaber høj beskæftigelse og værditilvækst. Overlevelsen hos de nye virksomheder er central og en vigtig forudsætning for en langvarig positiv effekt på samfundsøkonomien.

15 Talk by Claus Abildgren from BrightIdea: How to build innovation processes in your organization We are just like you, constantly striving to find ways to continuously innovate. And innovate smarter. Our goal is to provide companies with solutions that help them become better innovators. It's just what we do. Founded in 1999, Brightidea launched the first ever online innovation platform in The Brightidea Innovation Platform was designed to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of any organization's innovation process. Today, Brightidea's product offerings include WebStorm, Switchboard, and Pipeline a complete product suite that covers the entire idea lifecycle from initial collection through execution. The company is headquartered in San Francisco, California, with a field office in New York, New York. Brightidea's Management Team is comprised of some of the most innovative minds in the industry. Claus Abildgren, Vice President of Sales Claus Abildgren is Vice President of Sales for Brightidea, responsible for accelerating profitable growth for the company. Prior to joining Brightidea, Claus was the Director of Global Channel Strategy at Invensys, where he also led a corporate wide innovation program across the organization. In addition to his first hand experiences with driving an innovation agenda, he brings over 12 years of global sales and management expertise to the company. As a passionate customer advocate, Abildgren creates tangible results via hands-on business leadership, technology expertise as well as a deep-rooted understanding of the challenges facing Brightidea's current and future customers. Abildgren holds a Master of Science in Engineering from Technical University of Denmark and graduated with honors from the MBA program of the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.

16 IDEO Founded in 1991, IDEO (Pronounced "eye-dee-oh") is an innovation and design firm that uses a humancentered, design-based approach to help organizations in the business, government, education, healthcare, and social sectors innovate and grow in three ways: - Identify new ways to serve and support people by uncovering their latent needs, behaviors, and desires. - Visualize new directions for companies and brands and design the offerings - products, services, spaces, media, and software - that bring innovation strategy to life. - Enable organizations to change their cultures and build the capabilities required to sustain innovation. HIGHLIGHTS & ACCOLADES Ranked as one of the most innovative companies in the world by Boston Consulting Group ( , Business Week) Ranked #5 on Fast Company's list of the Top 25 Most Innovative Companies (2008) Awarded the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum's National Design Award for Product Design (2001) Winner of more IDEA awards than any other design firm 19 Red Dot awards; 15+ if Hanover awards. Featured in a 1999 episode of ABC's Nightline, which followed an IDEO team as they redesigned the shopping cart in four days. LEADERSHIP David Kelley, cofounder and chairman. Chaired professor at Stanford University and founder of Stanford's Institute of Design (the "d.school"); recipient of the National Design Award; member of the National Academy of Engineers. Tim Brown, CEO and president. Formerly director of IDEO Europe; contributor to the Harvard Business Review, The McKinsey Quarterly, and the World Economic Forum. Bill Moggridge, cofounder. Pioneer in the application of human factors in the design discipline; author of Designing Interactions (MIT Press, 2006). John Stoddard Prior to joining IDEO s California design team in 1997, John was the head of design in IDEO s London office. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, Great Britain, a

17 member of the Industrial Design Society of America, and of the Chartered Society of Designers in the UK. His current focus is on helping IDEO clients build stronger brands through design of innovative product user experiences. John has designed a wide range of products for clients in the US, Europe, and Asia, including telecommunications for AT&T and Dancall, consumer products for Hoover, Procter & Gamble and Pure Digital, medical products for Medtronic, Health Hero Networks and Advanced Bionics, furniture for Haworth and Steelcase, in-car systems for Ford, and business equipment for Chinese companies Founder and Huawei. He has helped develop product brand strategies for companies such as Intermec and Samsung. John received his Master s of Design in Industrial Design from the Royal College of Art in London.

18 San Francisco Bay Area - General information Silicon Valley presentation Silicon Valley is the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California, United States. The term originally referred to the region's large number of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually came to refer to all the high-tech businesses in the area; it is now generally used as a metonym for the high-tech sector. Despite the development of other high-tech economic centers throughout the United States, Silicon Valley continues to be the leading high-tech hub because of its large number of cutting-edge entrepreneurs, engineers and venture capitalists. Geographically, Silicon Valley encompasses the northern part of the Santa Clara Valley and adjacent communities, though the term is often used when referring to the Santa Clara Valley as a whole. Origin of the term The term Silicon Valley was coined by Ralph Vaerst, a Central California entrepreneur. Its first published use is credited to Don Hoefler, a friend of Vaerst's, who used the phrase as the title of a series of articles in the weekly trade newspaper Electronic News. The series, entitled "Silicon Valley USA," began in the paper's issue dated January 11, Valley refers to the Santa Clara Valley, located at the southern end of San Francisco Bay, while Silicon refers to the high concentration of companies involved in the semiconductor (silicon is used to create most semiconductors commercially) and computer industries that were concentrated in the area. These firms slowly replaced the orchards which gave the area its initial nickname, the Valley of Heart's Delight. History "Perhaps the strongest thread that runs through the Valley's past and present is the drive to "play" with novel technology, which, when bolstered by an advanced engineering degree and channeled by astute management, has done much to create the industrial powerhouse we see in the Valley today." Since the early twentieth century, Silicon Valley has been home to a vibrant, growing electronics industry. The industry began through experimentation and innovation in the fields of radio, television, and military electronics. Stanford University, its affiliates, and graduates have played a major role in the evolution of this area.