UC Berkeley at Google

Last Thursday, as part of the Discover Cal Series, Annalee Saxenian, Dean of UC Berkeley's School of Information, and Steven Weber, Director of UC Berkeley's Institute of International Studies spoke about Globalization and the Flow of Knowledge to an audience of about 250 Cal alumni living in the South Bay.
Saxenian drew on her latest book, The New Argonauts, to explain how immigrants returning from Silicon Valley to their home countries and opening businesses there are contributing to the development of "centers of skills" and "clusters of capabilities" that create innovation in developing countries. Rather than a zero-sum game to the detriment of Silicon Valley, Saxenian sees that as a benefit to the region.
Both speakers did acknowledge the growing inequalities in developing countries that come with an increasingly affluent class of knowledge workers. Interestingly, Saxenian argued that returning immigrants also bring progressive social changes to their home countries, and that this will ultimately contribute more to local development than the efforts of larger international development organizations. This corresponds to RiOS’ (and other) findings that homegrown solutions are often more successful than foreign imports.
Another interesting tidbit was that India recently allowed her citizens to hold double citizenship, and that google, which did a fabulous job of hosting the event, allows its employees to work on non-monetized areas for 20 percent of their time. That goes some way to explaining the company’s success, right up there with the way the company takes care of its employees.