Move over Silicon Valley, here come Europe’s start-ups
A technology and media conference being held in Germany this week has provided ample evidence that Silicon Valley’s dominance of Internet-style technology innovation is waning. The gathering, Digital Life Design, has become a showcase for a range of European entrepreneurs who have taken the start-up culture pioneered in Silicon Valley as a template and are successfully transplanting it here.
“The epicenter was Silicon Valley, but that has created a wave of innovation that has now reached the entire world,” said Yossi Vardi, an Israeli entrepreneur and investor who financed his son’s development of ICQ, an early Internet chat program later sold to America Online. Internet start-ups in Europe received a significant boost last month with the initial public offering of Open BC/Xing, a German Web site that is a competitor of the American site LinkedIn for social networking among businesses.
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