As national employment numbers fluctuate, political approval ratings hop scotch and budget cuts face every aspect of the California State government business innovators see opportunity. Who exactly are those innovators? The official term for them is entrepreneurs, supported by their financial friends the venture capitalists.
Victor Hwang, Managing Director for the Silicon Valley based venture capital firm T2 Venture Capital and former president of the LARTA Institute (a U.S. based innovation hub geared towards maximizing the commercial potential research and development for entrepreneurs in underdeveloped nations), will be attending Pepperdine on Thursday afternoon, March 15, at 3 pm to discuss his recently released book, “The Rainforest.
Silicon Valley, the southern part of San Francisco Bay, is most widely known for berthing innovative technology entrepreneurs like Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Steve Jobs, Larry Page, etc. Home to many of the youngest billionaires in the world and headquarters for many of the nation’s largest technology companies, Silicon Valley is an entrepreneurial hotbed unrivaled in America. But why?
Hwang, one of the leading industry experts at the intersection of venture capital and global development, wrote “The Rainforest” in order to highlight a new way of explaining the nature of places like Silicon Valley and discuss ways for human networks to generate extraordinary creativity and output.
“He argues that free market thinking fails to consider the impact of human nature on the innovation process, and that certain cultural behaviors are critical to unlock human potential,” emailed social and tech entrepreneur Mike Costache, an 1999 alumnus of Seaver College and 2003 alumnus of Pepperdine’s School of Law Strauss Institute.
Hwang will be highlighting the difference between entrepreneurial hotbeds like Silicon Valley and other communities, how the city of Los Angeles can implement some of these differences, and ways to foster innovation in personal networks in the Fireside Room on March 15 from 3-4 pm after speaking at UCLA earlier in the afternoon.
