The Future Doesn’t Belong to Silicon Valley …. from Argentina to Azerbaijan, I’ve discovered that the best ideas rarely come from where we expect … the new geography of innovation

June 29, 2026

For more than 35 years, I have been fortunate to work with business leaders in every corner of the world, helping them imagine what comes next and reinvent their organisations for a changing future. Along the way, I have worked with more than 300 companies across over 50 countries, from global giants to ambitious start-ups, from government agencies to family businesses.

One lesson has become increasingly clear. Great ideas are not confined to Silicon Valley, London or Shenzhen. Innovation can emerge anywhere. Not because one place has better technology than another, but because people everywhere face problems worth solving. The best innovators simply see those problems differently.

In Argentina, I helped Mercado Libre develop one of the world’s leading fintech platforms. In Egypt, I worked with Orascom to imagine entirely new cities. In Azerbaijan, Azercell reinvented telecoms as a life concierge. In China, I watched Haier transform from an appliance manufacturer into a global ecosystem of connected products and services. In Iceland, Climeworks pushed the boundaries of carbon capture. In Denmark, the city of Odense reinvented itself as one of the world’s leading robotics hubs.

These experiences have convinced me that the geography of innovation is being rewritten. Every country, city and organisation has the potential to shape the future in its own distinctive way. That is why Mehran Gul’s The New Geography of Innovation resonated so strongly with me. It captures a truth I have seen repeatedly throughout my career: the next great idea could come from anywhere.

Innovation without borders

It is a rethinking of one of the most persistent myths in modern business: that innovation is concentrated in a small number of global “hotspots,” most notably Silicon Valley. Gul challenges this idea directly, arguing instead that innovation is becoming increasingly distributed, multipolar, and shaped by a far more complex global landscape of cities, institutions, capital flows, and talent networks.

At its core, the book is about movement—of ideas, people, capital, and technologies—and how that movement is reshaping where innovation happens and who gets to participate in it. Gul’s central argument is that we are entering an era in which innovation is no longer anchored to a few dominant geographies, but instead emerges from a shifting mosaic of regional ecosystems, each with its own strengths, constraints, and strategic logic.

Rather than treating innovation as a purely technological phenomenon, Gul frames it as a geopolitical, institutional, and urban process. Where innovation happens depends not just on talent and venture capital, but on regulation, culture, infrastructure, education systems, state capacity, and global connectivity. In this sense, geography is not background—it is destiny-shaping.

Beyond Silicon Valley

One of the book’s central intellectual targets is the “Silicon Valley narrative”, the idea that breakthrough innovation is primarily the product of a unique concentration of talent, risk capital, and entrepreneurial culture in one region.

Gul does not deny Silicon Valley’s importance. Instead, he argues that its dominance has created a misleading mental model. For decades, policymakers and business leaders have assumed that replicating Silicon Valley requires copying its surface features: venture capital, startups, incubators, and tech campuses. But this overlooks deeper structural conditions that are far harder to replicate.

These include:

  • deep university-industry linkages
  • immigration-enabled talent inflows
  • legal frameworks that support risk-taking
  • massive defence and research spending
  • dense professional networks
  • a culture of failure tolerance
  • global market access

Silicon Valley is not just a cluster of companies. It is an entire institutional ecosystem that evolved over decades, often through unique historical conditions.

Gul’s key point is that trying to reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere often fails because it focuses on symptoms rather than systems.

The rise of new innovation hubs

Rather than a single dominant centre, Gul describes a world in which multiple innovation hubs are emerging simultaneously, each specialising in different dimensions of technological and industrial development.

He highlights the rise of cities and regions across Asia, the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America that are developing distinctive innovation profiles. Some excel in manufacturing ecosystems, others in digital platforms, fintech, biotech, or deep-tech research.

For example:

  • Shenzhen represents manufacturing speed, hardware iteration, and supply chain density.
  • Bangalore has become a global hub for software engineering and digital services.
  • Tel Aviv stands out in cybersecurity and defence-related innovation.
  • Berlin and London combine creative industries with fintech and digital entrepreneurship.
  • Singapore has positioned itself as a regulated innovation hub, balancing state capacity with openness.

Rather than competing to become “the next Silicon Valley,” these regions are developingdifferent models of innovation suited to their institutional contexts.

Gul’s argument is that this diversity is not a temporary phase, but the defining characteristic of the next era.

Innovation as an ecosystem, not a place

A central conceptual shift in the book is the move from thinking about innovation as location-based to thinking about it as ecosystem-based.

In Gul’s framing, innovation is not simply what happens in a city. It is what happens when multiple systems align:

  • universities producing research and talent
  • firms commercialising ideas
  • investors allocating risk capital
  • governments shaping regulation and incentives
  • infrastructure enabling connectivity
  • global networks linking local ecosystems to markets

When these elements reinforce each other, innovation accelerates. When they are misaligned, even well-resourced regions struggle.

This explains why some cities with significant capital and talent still fail to produce sustained innovation, while others with fewer resources succeed.

Gul emphasises that ecosystems are dynamic. They evolve over time, responding to shocks such as technological shifts, geopolitical changes, and economic crises. This dynamism means that no innovation geography is permanently dominant.

The role of the state in shaping innovation

A particularly important theme in the book is the role of the state—not as a passive regulator, but as an active architect of innovation systems.

Gul argues that different countries adopt fundamentally different models of state involvement in innovation. Some adopt a laissez-faire approach, relying heavily on markets and venture capital. Others take a more interventionist stance, using industrial policy, strategic investment, and infrastructure development to shape outcomes.

Importantly, he suggests that both models can work—but in different contexts and for different types of innovation.

For example, state-led strategies have been particularly effective in scaling industries that require coordination, capital intensity, and long time horizons, such as semiconductors, renewable energy, and advanced manufacturing. Market-led systems tend to excel in software, platforms, and consumer internet innovation, where experimentation and speed matter more than coordination.

The implication is that there is no single optimal model of innovation governance. Instead, countries must align their institutional structures with their strategic ambitions.

Globalisation and fragmentation

Another key argument in The New Geography of Innovation is that globalisation is not disappearing, but transforming.

Earlier phases of globalisation were characterised by increasing integration, with supply chains spreading across borders in pursuit of efficiency. Innovation often followed this pattern, with multinational firms distributing R&D, production, and talent across global networks.

However, Gul argues that we are now entering a more fragmented phase, shaped by geopolitical competition, supply chain resilience concerns, and strategic decoupling in certain industries.

This fragmentation does not eliminate innovation networks, but it reshapes them. Companies and countries are increasingly building regionalised innovation systems, balancing global connectivity with strategic autonomy.

As a result, innovation is becoming both more global and more local at the same time: global in knowledge flows, but local in production and strategic control.

Talent as the true currency of innovation

Across the book, Gul consistently returns to one central resource: talent.

While capital is mobile and technology is increasingly accessible, talent remains the most important constraint on innovation ecosystems. However, talent itself is becoming more geographically fluid due to remote work, digital platforms, and global education networks.

This creates a paradox: talent is both more concentrated in certain hubs and more distributed globally than ever before.

Cities and countries that successfully attract, retain, and develop talent gain disproportionate advantages. Immigration policy, education systems, quality of life, and professional opportunity all become critical determinants of innovation success.

Gul suggests that in the long term, the most successful innovation ecosystems will be those that function as talent magnets rather than capital magnets.

The importance of institutional density

A subtle but important idea in the book is what might be called “institutional density.” Innovation ecosystems thrive not just because of individual companies or universities, but because of the richness of interactions between institutions.

Dense ecosystems allow:

  • rapid knowledge transfer
  • cross-sector collaboration
  • faster commercialisation of research
  • mobility of talent between firms
  • feedback loops between markets and innovation

Silicon Valley’s enduring advantage, Gul argues, is not just venture capital or startups, but the density of relationships between universities, firms, investors, and government agencies.

Emerging hubs that want to compete must therefore focus not only on attracting anchor companies, but on building these deep relational structures.

Innovation cycles and shifting leadership

Gul also emphasises that innovation leadership is cyclical. Historically dominant regions eventually lose their edge as new technologies, industries, and institutional conditions emerge.

For example, leadership in industrial innovation has shifted over time from Britain to the United States, and now increasingly to a more distributed global system involving Asia, Europe, and beyond.

These shifts are not random. They reflect changes in:

  • energy systems
  • communication technologies
  • production methods
  • education systems
  • geopolitical structures

The implication is that current innovation maps are temporary. The geography of innovation is always being rewritten.

The new geography

The most important idea in The New Geography of Innovation is that innovation is not anchored to place—it is anchored to systems of alignment.

Places matter, but only insofar as they enable the alignment of institutions, capital, talent, infrastructure, and governance.

This reframing has significant implications for governments, investors, and corporate leaders. Instead of asking “Where is the next Silicon Valley?”, the more useful question becomes:

Where are the ecosystems most effectively aligning the conditions for innovation in a particular domain?

A more complex innovation world

The New Geography of Innovation ultimately replaces a simple story with a more complex—but more realistic—one. Innovation is no longer the preserve of a handful of global cities. It is a distributed, competitive, and evolving system shaped by multiple overlapping forces.

Gul’s message is both cautionary and optimistic. Cautionary because no region can assume permanent leadership in innovation. Optimistic because the diffusion of innovation capabilities creates more opportunities for countries, cities, and organisations to participate in shaping the future.

The geography of innovation is no longer fixed. It is fluid, contested, and constantly being redrawn.

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