Of Silicon Valley and the Traitorous Eight

Around this time, most of the columns and editorial pieces you read will be about predictions and what to look out for in the coming year. I have been doing such pieces every December since we founded this publication. As much as I would like to continue this tradition, I am compelled to tell a different story this time around.

A lean team of technology evangelists and I have been pushing technology entrepreneurship in the continent through a vehicle called DEMO Africa. In the last three years, we have launched 120 technology start-ups and have a pipeline of more than 1000 very good, bankable start-ups looking for customers and/or investment.

This evangelism has made us speak to entrepreneurs, innovators, incubation hub owners and managers, investors – Private Equity, Venture and Angels; and governments. Every government official, policy maker or even just technology enthusiast that we have spoken to is trying to create a “Silicon Valley” in their country. I am certain you have come across names such as Silicon Cape (South Africa); Silicon Savanna (Kenya), Silicon Strip (Ngong Road, Kenya); Yabacon (Nigeria) and many other variations of the same.

While on a trip to the Silicon Valley with 5 of the DEMO Africa Winners who were invited to pitch at the DEMO US launch pad, I decided to spend some time reading about the Valley and what makes it different from any other innovation and entrepreneurial ecosystem.

Enter the Traitorous Eight.

The Traitorous Eight are eight men who left Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory en masse in 1957 and formed Fairchild Semiconductors. William Shockley had in 1956 recruited a group of young PhD graduates with the goal to develop and produce new semiconductor devices. While Shockley had received a Nobel Prize in Physics and was an experienced researcher and teacher, his managing of the group created harsh working conditions. He chose a strategy for circuit design that failed and created an intolerable working atmosphere. The group of PhD graduates hired demanded that Shockley be replaced. When their demands were rebuffed, they realized they had to leave.

Fairchild became an incubator of Silicon Valley. When the Traitorous Eight decided to leave their jobs, there wasn’t a venture-capital industry or even many start-up precedents to be found in California. But it is estimated that more than 400 technology companies in the US today can trace their roots to these eight people, the most famous being Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, who later left and founded Intel Corporation in 1968.

So I ask: who are Africa’s Traitorous Eight? Every country in Africa needs its own Traitorous Eight, the eight individuals who will create an enabling environment for start-ups, not just technology start-ups to start, flourish and multiply. Silicon Valley was built by people who believed in fairness, trust and collaboration. This collaborative nature of the Silicon Valley community is a culture that could be developed and sustained by aspiring innovation ecosystems in Africa. Not grand policy pronouncements and strategy papers.

(This commentary, by CIO East publisher Harry Hare, was first published in the Dec’13/Jan’15 edition of the magazine)