Devoted to branding and building and protecting brands

Hate to say it but the Rooskies did more for the eventual birth of Silicon Valley and the pioneering brands we associate with it, when they sent Sputnik into space fifty years ago this week, than almost anybody or anything.

How?  In one convulsive jolt, this country was catapulted (“launched”) into an era that would emphasize training in science, math, and computer technology.  Indeed, no less an institution than Stanford University, prodded by its president J.E. Wallace Sterling, vowed to redouble its prominence as a center of science and mathematics education.  It did, and among other things raised admissions standards drastically, which took a toll on its football program, but that’s another story.  

Of course, the Hewlett-Packards and the Lockheeds, et. al., were going concerns in 1957, but the area hadn’t seen anything yet.  That one event became an inflection point.  Suddenly we’d been caught snoozing on a scale almost comparable to the attack on Pearl Harbor.  We mobilized for the Space Race in that moment.  And Silicon Valley was conceived, if not actually born, as a result.

Semiconductors begat mini computers, which begat personal computers, which begat networks, which begat email and the Internet, which begat spam and viruses.  There’s a business lesson here.  I think.