Paul Graham has an article on How To Be Silicon Valley. In the article he summarized what he thinks contributed to the success of the Valley, and what's not.
I have always wondered why Hong Kong cannot build a high tech industry of its own. After all, it is in no shortage of money (the government poured in billions of dollars to invest in local high tech industry) and people (it has talented students and famous universities, in fact, students from HKU were among the top in the ACM worldwide programming competition in 2005). However, most of my friends who went back to Hong Kong after a successful career in US either felt dismay about their job in the high tech industry, or switched field and became a financial analyst. I used to think pay is a reason, but no longer believe so after getting insider information that a local government sponsored company Astri would match the salary.
I am starting to believe one of the major reasons Hong Kong doesn't have success building a high tech industry is that it is not an attractive place for nerds. Hong Kong's culture is closer to NYC's, more money oriented and materialistic. Hong Kong people don't like to be nerdy, or be perceived to be nerdy. As described in the article, nerdy people tend to go to places where other nerds are, and Hong Kong can probably never get the critical mass.
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I disagree to a certain extent. The main ingredient to building a high tech cluster is to have a wide range of ideas and the freedom for those ideas to foster. On the first point, perhaps the success of HK programming teams is an indication, though I suspect that's an exception to the norm. Most HK students aren't that creative. On the latter point, most managers won't allow such creativity; the analogy to NYC might work here. Also, short term gain is definitely valued more in Hong Kong, so initial investment will always be missing.
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