# WAKEUP
By Victoria Momsen MBA, 2017
Victoria is currently a full-time MBA candidate at AGSM and recipient of an AGSM Director’ s Women in Leadership Scholarship. Professionally she has over 9 years of experience in the banking, sports and not-forprofit sectors gaining specialties in liquidity management, business improvement and corporate restructure. Victoria is passionate about building an organisations’ internal capabilities to drive improved business performance and deliver long-lasting success.
Photo credit: Provided by author
In August, 40 AGSM students were lucky enough to head off on the very first IBE Study Tour to San Francisco and Silicon Valley. They were lead by Professor Nick Wailes and visited everything from startups to eBay, met young Aussie entrepreneurs and geeked out at the Intel Museum and Vander- Bend Factory.
Yes, there were ping pong tables. And fully stocked office kitchens and cool open plan fit outs. And the TV series“ Silicon Valley” is apparently a fairly true representation of some of the behaviour in the Valley. However, beyond all the clichés, Silicon Valley and the Bay Area continue to be a thriving tech entrepreneurial hub attracting the best and brightest talent from across the US and world.
Whilst there was some activity in the development of electronics during the early 1920s and 30s, the broad scale development of the industry was spearheaded by Frederick Terman during his tenure at Stanford University. The university, officially Leland Stanford Jr. University, was founded by Leland Stanford in memory of his deceased son. Stanford granted the University a sum of money and an 8,100 acre cattle ranch. In 1937, Terman started to encourage Stanford faculty and graduates to start their own businesses locally and arrange for seed funding via the University itself. Seeing further opportunities to support the electronics industry, Terman used 660 acres as an industrial park, with Hewlett-Packard and Varian Brothers amongst the first tenants.
Nowadays, modern day Silicon Valley is feeling the pressure of constant growth – inflated real estate prices, roads clogged with daily commuters and new pressures from the millennial generation. Most big technology firms have now taken up significant office space in San Francisco( either for a relocated head office or flexible workspace in addition to offices in the Valley) as employees demand the lifestyle and conveniences of a big city. Companies like WeWork are flourishing by providing open plan, flexible and communal working spaces all across the US, UK and Australia. As charismatic co-founder of WeWork Miguel McKelvey explained, the growth in demand for this type of flexible 4 AGSM