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Around the world, there is a craze to attempt to create ”The Silicon Valley of ,” but we rarely read about a successful new competitor to Silicon Valley. California's Silicon Valley is known for innovation and the countless number of technology startups in the area.Even though many of these companies are working on very different products they share a common trait among them: countless success stories . Many wish to replicate and achieve that level of success but few ponder over the real reasons behind it. Entrepreneurs from all over the world travel to Silicon Valley to study the culture of openness and a free exchange of ideas.
There are many lessons to be learnt from successful Silicon Valley companies especially about the culture that cultivates them and is their driving force.
Even though the culture is still not being practiced in Pakistan and we are currently at the very basic step of innovation if put rather positively, Pakistani entrepreneurs can learn from the experiences. Here is a collection of some powerful observations you will find useful as lessons right from the heart of the innovation hub of the world

Stay focused against the tide
Any breakthrough innovation always goes against the grain or the flow of things. Success is achieved not from the initial idea but from your daily persistence and staying focused on making things work. Stay focused .. re-assess .. refine ..reintroduce if you have to but keeping moving even in the face of daily near-constant failure.


Leaders make way for people and let them shine through
Silicon Valley leaders share a quality of making their vision happen but to reach the end goal they stay flexible on the path. The Silicon culture encourages collaboration –managers act as connectors and enablers and later see the progress through. It is the leader’s ability to tap the collective minds of the business that drives the business. Leaders allow people to self-organize as teams and come together to solve different problems as a matter of choice not planning, as good ideas gain momentum the top minds get attracted from around the business.


Happy employees make great companies
The most successful founder-led organizations understand well that it is always the happy employees that drive innovation and success. While any good employee would naturally demand a good compensation it is not always money that eventually decides how happy the workforce is, flexible time schedules and letting people have a more comfortable environment to work in goes a long way. Mission driven employees + flexible companies are a success formula because the more autonomy employees have to be resourceful and make decisions means it is more likely they will stick around. Artificial constraints, such as formal organizational hierarchies and belabored consensus-building processes, create waste and dampen motivation. The most innovative companies set clear expectations when defining goals and investment risk but let employees develop their own influence circles and define the best way to meet them.


Trend Alert : Going back to the roots is the new way forward
Many successful Silicon Valley startups are simple ideas that focus on basic improvement in the way we live An example is Sprig, the on-demand fresh-food delivery service offers that offers three meal options daily and aims to deliver the food in 15 minutes. This idea encourages us to think that any amount of innovation is useful as long as it makes peoples lives better in any way. In April, the company raised $45 million in funding, which spurred its expansion to Chicago from the San Francisco Bay Area


Change the perspective : Build platforms , not products.
Silicon Valley has changed the way the whole sales economy was perceived , previously the math was simple : more products sold meant greater profits but now , not so much. Silicon Valley doesn’t limit the profits to products, instead embraces the unbounded economics of the platform, where connecting users and interactions is the new coin of the realm. There are clear advantages to this too, unlike static products you cant limit a platforms value to a number because it is defined by the users who populate it. A platform cannot be limited to geographical or any other boundaries and can be morphed to adapt to the needs of its users while continuously offering new services and innovative ideas. Silicon Valley thinks in terms of networks, platforms, shareable services and ecosystems – these can all scale very quickly which is the main competitive advantage they provide once it comes to making money

Money only gets you so far .
Raising money for a company can be a great deal of work but keeping it coming is an entirely different game altogether. Pakistan is just seeing a shifting trend towards using venture capitalists money but gone are the days when VCs were merely an elite cash dispensary. Innovation can have a short shelf life, so entrepreneurs with great ideas but little business experience need coaching and infrastructure as much as cash. The trends around using VC money are changing fast with VCs now evolved from being just financers into proxy boards that provide entrepreneurs the right conducive environment with equipment, work and lab spaces , equipment and the right guidance to lead them through. Even though money is of prime importance, any startup should look for complete support ecosystems that can help plug it in the right place by extending its vision. Scaling is of key importance to the success of any startup and extending the vision of a startup depending upon how effective is the alignment between startup and its support network.

Role playing isn’t just child’s play
“User-centered design” has become popular all over the world with companies focusing a great amount of their efforts on it but for Silicon Valley it is like air they breathe.Valley companies are obsessed with the customers’ likes and dislikes and from the very top to the bottom of the employee hierarchy everyone at all levels look at the design like engineers and customers to find problems. This leads to smooth, rich user experiences attracting even larger user base.


Anna Lee Saxenian , the dean of the School of Information and a professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at UC Berkeley predicted in 1980, that Silicon Valley would stop growing, because the transportation was too congested, the housing costs were too high, salaries were rising, and companies that had founded themselves there would be expanding into lower-cost areas around the country. She had been totally wrong- Silicon Valley was continuing to boom, despite her predictions. Silicon Valley is known for all the technological advances, but it is the region’s longstanding leadership in business model innovation that offers the deepest and most transformational insights.