All over Asia, governments are trying to replicate California's Silicon Valley. Each of the projects, so far, is a failure. The main reason for the failure is that Asian leaders have not yet realized that it takes more than a plot of land, an impressive budget, a graduating class of computer engineers and a lot of fanfare to make another Silicon Valley.
What it does take are two phenomena: a concentration of great universities, and a society with sufficient freedom, including lack of cumbersome regulations, to encourage entrepreneurship.
Robert Myers, Hoover Institution scholar and Korean affairs specialist, put his finger on the problem in a recent Tokyo speech: