From collective learning to Silicon Valley replication: The limits to synergistic entrepreneurship in Sophia Antipolis

Taking Silicon Valley as a “Weberian ideal type” of high-tech development, one can derive 10 key characteristics which together can be used to measure to what extent other regions of the world have been able to duplicate this “hot spot” of economic transformation. Comparisons of such synergistic entrepreneurship are illustrated by the case of Sophia Antipolis in France, characterized by initial large company involvement, a utopian environmental design by Pierre Laffitte and the process of high-tech innovation among small and medium-sized companies, particularly in the telecommunication sector.