Manufacturing in China and innovation in Europe - move over silicon valley

John Markoff of the New York Times wrote about a technology and media conference being held in New York this week and how its provided ample evidence that Silicon Valley’s dominance of Internet-style technology innovation is waning.




The star of this year’s event was Niklas Zennstrom, the Swedish co-founder of the file-sharing system Kazaa and the Internet telephony company Skype, which was sold to eBay for $2.6 billion in 2005. Mr. Zennstrom last week took the wraps off a previously secretive start-up, Joost, that intends to provide a peer-to-peer approach to distributing video online.

“We’re trying to take the good things about television and the good things about the Internet and put them together,” he said.



Like many participants here, Mr. Zennstrom voiced the opinion that Internet-based commerce would accelerate in its disruptive effect on traditional businesses. Skype, for example, now says that it carries 4.4 percent of all worldwide long-distance calling.

“We now have a pretty decent Internet infrastructure,” Mr. Zennstrom said, noting in the future that it would give rise to “many, many more disruptive industries.”

Read the whole article here.