Technology centres during the economic downturn: what have we learned?

This paper documents and assesses the economic performance of metropolitan technology centres in the USA during the business downturn of the early 2000s. We find that many of the USA's leading high-technology centres have performed at or near the national average, but that some of the nation's most prominent technology centres have fared poorly during the downturn, including Silicon Valley. The main factors that accentuated economic decline in technology centres during the recent recession include: a poorly diversified overall economic base; limited diversity within high-technology industries; relatively high (all industry) wages; and high levels of venture capital funding during the end of the ‘boom’ period of the late 1990s. We find that counter to some of the recent literature on regional development and knowledge-based industry clustering and networking, the rules of regional economic development have not changed dramatically with the so-called ‘new economy’. High-technology regions, just as ‘traditional’ industry regions over the past century, are vulnerable to pronounced economic cycles of growth and decline. The cycles can be particularly pronounced if regional economies are not well diversified and labour costs are not moderated during economic downturns. We also find that venture capital can exaggerate rather than moderate regional economic cycles, such as economic growth years in the USA from the late 1990s to the recession of 2001. The model suggests that free-flowing venture capital dollars may result in an over reliance on these funds, at the expense of a sound business model with sustainable growth and reasonable cash flow. Also, business networks associated with venture capital fund flow might be detrimental at critical economic turning points, often resulting in a rush of dollars in a limited business sector, rather than a diversified set of entrepreneurial ventures.