作者：理查德·沃特斯(Richard Waters) 来源：《金融时报》





When Raj Vaswami joined a little Silicon Valley company called @Home from graduate school in 1996 he could not have imagined what lay ahead.

The consumer broadband company had the sort of free-wheeling engineering culture on which the Valley prides itself. "They let me do all kinds of things they had no business letting me do, like designing parts of the [network] infrastructure," the computer scientist says.

Mr Vaswami became chief scientist, while @Home went on to be one of the great boom-and-bust stories of the 1990s technology bubble. Its merger with internet portal Excite in 1999 and bankruptcy in 2001 were among the highest and lowest points of the consumer internet in its early years.

Mr Vaswami is now taking part in a different Silicon Valley boom. This one is sucking in talent from some of the industries that have dominated the region over the past decade, such as the internet, software and systems. It is driven by the same belief in unbounded opportunity that fuelled the rise of the internet.

Under the banner of "clean technology," this latest Valley obsession spans a wide range of technologies and industries. These include alternative energy sources such as solar power and ethanol; technologies geared to energy management and conservation; and new materials and industrial processes with varied environmental benefits.

For Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs, and its venture capitalists, the newness of many of these fields explains much of their attraction.

"I sort of got to a point in my career where looking at another software company was very unappealing," says Dave Cope, a serial entrepreneur whose last two start-ups were in enterprise software.

Scott Lang, who had spent more than 20 years at two information technology services companies, was feeling the same: "I thought the systems integration business was getting more and more commoditised."

Both have joined the rush to Silicon Valley's latest start-ups - Mr Cope to become chief executive of Purfresh, a provider of "clean solutions for food and water", and Mr Lang to head Silver Spring Networks, which aims to boost the efficiency of electric and other utilities.

To some extent there are technological overlaps that explain this brain drain from the more traditional Valley IT world. In fields such as data networking, systems integration and automation, skills developed elsewhere are becoming useful in new markets.

Mr Vaswami, now chief technology officer of Silver Spring, is applying the same expertise needed to build @Home's broadband network to create networks for utilities to monitor and improvetheir distribution. "It looked to us like the utility industry was going to face the same kind of thing as the telecoms industry in the 1980s and cable in the 1990s," he says.

The substance that gave the Valley its name also points to the overlap in technologies. Silicon is as core to the solar industry as it is to chips, one reason why there has been a boom - some locals say a bubble - in new solar companies in the Valley.

At the same time, the new industries are drawing on expertise that lay dormant when the consumer internet and enterprise software dominated the Valley.

"We're finding these guys are coming out of the woodwork - guys who did civil engineering in college and had to go into software because that's where the jobs were," says Paul Holland, a partner at Foundation Capital, a local venture capital firm.

Yet the brain drain to the clean-tech industry also draws on something other than pure technical expertise. Thanks to the IT boom, the Valley has been central in training a generation of US entrepreneurs. With new markets opening up in adjacent technology fields, it is only natural that those same executives are now making the switch.

Mr Cope says: "You can hire experts from [big companies like] ConAgra, but very few of these people can survive in a start-up environment." Executives like Mr Vaswami, who proudly calls himself "a small-company guy", are typical of this movement: they can't wait to grapple with the opportunities being thrown off by the traditionally monolithic energy and utility industries.

The can-do attitude of this Silicon Valley technology elite may be one of its strengths, but it can also sometimes look like hubris in the face of the challenges of a new industry.

An early case is Tesla Motors, maker of an all-electric sports car. Started by two executives who made their fortunes inventing an electronic book reader, and backed by Elon Musk, co-founder of online payment service PayPal, Tesla is a poster child of the Valley's push into new environmentally friendly industries.

Yet a faultytransmission system has already delayed production for a year - Mr Musk blames a design decision by the first CEO, who left under a cloud late last year. Former Flextronics boss Michael Marks stood in as interim CEO before the arrival of Ze'ev Drori, who made his mark with a company that produced a type of computer memory.

Mr Drori has said Tesla will ship its first cars this spring with a temporary make-do transmission, then offer a free upgrade when it overcomes the teething problems in its more ambitious system.

It is a move familiar to customers of the systems and software industries, where "1.0" versions of products are always assumed to be in need of improvement. How it will go down with buyers of a premium sports car remains to be seen.

1996年，拉杰•瓦斯瓦米(Raj Vaswami)研究生毕业，加入了一家名叫@Home的硅谷小公司。当时，他不可能想象得到前路通向何方。

这家消费者宽带公司拥有硅谷引以为豪的那种随心所欲的工程文化。这位电脑专业人士说："他们让我做各种各样犯不上让我干的活儿，例如设计网络基础设施的某些部分。"

瓦斯瓦米成了首席科学家，@Home则成了上世纪90年代科技泡沫时期大起大落的公司之一。它1999年与门户网站Excite的合并，2001年破产，随其它公司一道经历了消费者互联网初期的盛衰。

现在，瓦斯瓦米正在参与硅谷的另一轮繁荣。这一轮繁荣正在从过去十年在这个地区居主导地位的一些行业中吸收人才，如互联网、软件和系统业。和互联网的崛起一样，这轮繁荣的推动力也是人们相信其中存在巨大机遇。

在"清洁技术"的旗帜下，硅谷这次的执迷横跨了众多技术与行业，其中包括可替代能源，如太阳能和乙醇；适用于能源管理和保存的技术；以及各种环保新材料与加工工艺。

对硅谷的企业家和风险资本家来说，许多这些领域的吸引力就在于一个字："新"。

戴夫•科普(Dave Cope)说："我的事业好像发展到了这样一个时刻，再创立软件公司已经很没有意思了。"科普连续创立了多家企业，之前的两家初创企业都是企业软件方面的公司。

斯科特•兰(Scott Lang)也有同感，他在两家IT服务公司工作了20多年。他说："我觉得，系统整合业务越来越不值钱了。"

他们二位都加入了硅谷新一轮创业大潮--科普成了Purfresh的首席执行官，这家公司提供"食品和水的清洁办法"；兰成了Silver Spring Networks的负责人，这家公司旨在提高电力和其它公用事业的效率。

硅谷传统IT界的这种人才流失，在某种程度上可以用技术重叠来解释。在数据网络、系统整合和自动化等领域，其它地方发展起来的技能在新市场开始变得有用。

瓦斯瓦米现在是Silver Spring Networks首席技术官，他正运用与建造@Home宽带网络所需的相同专业技能，创建公用事业网络，检测和改善其分配。他说："在我们看来，公用事业行业即将面临20世纪80年代电信业和20世纪90年代有线电视业所面临的相同局面。"

硅谷的得名，实质上也是出于技术重叠。硅谷是芯片业的中心，也是太阳能行业的中心，这正是硅谷涌现出诸多新的太阳能公司的一个原因--当地一些人称之为泡沫。

与此同时，这些新行业也在吸收在消费者互联网与企业软件主导硅谷时处于沉睡中的专业技术。

当地风险资本公司Foundation Capital的合伙人保罗•霍兰(Paul Holland)说："我们发现这些家伙突然就冒了出来--他们在大学里学习土木工程，但不得不进入软件业，因为只有在那里才找得到工作。"

然而，人才向清洁技术的流动带来的不仅仅是纯粹的技术技能。由于IT繁荣，硅谷成了一代美国企业家的培训中心。随着相邻技术领域打开新市场，高管转型可以说是再自然而然不过了。

科普表示："你可以从ConAgra这样的大公司招募专家，但这些人很少能适应初创企业的环境。"瓦斯瓦米骄傲地把自己称作"专混小公司的家伙"，他这样的高管是这种趋势中的典型人物：他们会第一时间抓住历来庞大而僵化的能源与公用事业行业扔掉的机会。

这种硅谷技术精英的自信态度也许是其一大长处，但在面对新行业的诸多挑战时，有时候可能也会显得狂妄自大。

一个早期的例子是Tesla Motors公司--一家全电力跑车制造商。在在线支付服务"支付宝"(PayPal)联合创始人埃隆•马斯克(Elon Musk)的支持下，两名靠发明电子图书阅读器起家的高管创建了Tesla公司。它是硅谷向环保新行业进军的典型。

然而，有缺陷的传动系统已经使生产推迟了一年，马斯克将其归咎为第一任首席执行官的设计决策--这位首席执行官在去年底黯然离任。曾任伟创力公司(Flextronics)老板的迈克尔•马克斯(Michael Marks)临时出任首席执行官，直到因创立一种电脑存储器生产企业而名声大噪泽夫•德罗里(Ze'ev Drori)到任。

德罗里表示，Tesla将于今年春季推出其首批汽车，车上使用临时对付的传动系统，然后，在攻克其更具雄心系统的初期问题之后，会提供免费升级。

对于系统和软件业的消费者来说，这种举措并不陌生。在那些行业，人们总是认为"1.0"版本的产品需要改进。至于它如何才能吸引高档跑车购买者，且让我们拭目以待吧。
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