If you think about the history of mobile handsets, in many respects there was a time when Asia and then Europe all led North America.
I think there are four or five interesting pockets where a lot of cool technology companies are getting started. Chicago is one of them. New York is certainly another. Silicon Valley really dominates. And you're seeing some stuff out of Boston and Seattle and down South.
Where I work, in the Arab region, people are busy taking up Western innovations and changing them into things which are neither conventionally Western, nor are they traditionally Islamic.
If you want to go and build a company that exists in Silicon Valley, then you should go and do it there. But if you want to build a company that is Australian, that represents your culture and your being, then you should do it in Sydney.
I am not that concerned that innovation in some large scale sense will suddenly and abruptly shift from one part of the world to another.
People forget we've got awesome entrepreneurs all over the country, especially in the North East.
The problems that you see startups tackling are dramatically different in different cities. Silicon Valley is unlikely to produce the same set of companies as New York or Cleveland because the region has a different set of strengths and defining institutions.
The Kansas City metro doesn't get recognized often enough for the innovative and often model-building work that's going on here.
