Palo Alto as Prelude to America More Broadly - When the Limit Shifts from Knowledge Workers to Entrepreneurship (the transition from an information to entrepreneurial economy)

Today, about one-third of Americans over 25 have a Bachelors degree.* In the mid-1950s, more than a third of the men in Palo Alto did (and - remarkably for the time, so did 20% of the women). Palo Alto was about 65 years ahead of the US in terms of education levels.

Economies have limits. The limit to the information economy is knowledge workers and their information technology. Once you've overcome that limit, the next limit you face is entrepreneurship.

Overcoming the limit of knowledge workers both enables and requires you to then address the limit of entrepreneurship. Universities at this stage, for instance, don't just work to create new graduates but new knowledge, technologies, companies and industries.

Stanford carved out space on campus in the 1950s for an industrial park that had high-tech companies leasing space that could hire its graduates and collaborate with its professors. It also leased space to venture capitalists who could fund startups - some of which were spun off by Stanford graduates and professors. Palo Alto was a highly-educated region that was a magnet for venture capital and entrepreneurs.

This suggests that the US might be within about a decade of seeing the sort of entrepreneurial activity that characterized Silicon Valley late in the 20th century. (Why just a decade rather than two or three behind? Following is always faster than leading.)

Latest numbers for Palo Alto? 83% of the population over 25 has a Bachelor's degree or higher. In about 50 years, the rest of the US might have similar education levels - and a similar proclivity towards entrepreneurship.

* From Margaret O'Mara's The Code