The Triangle wants to be thought of as the leading technology center outside Silicon Valley. It isn't alone. The Route 128 corridor near Boston, one of the world's leading technology meccas until massive job cuts snuffed some of its glow a few years ago, is once again bursting with business and bluster. In Austin, Texas, a jalapeno-hot technology industry led by Dell Computer, IBM, Applied Materials and other heavyweights helped the region add 6.2 percent more jobs in 1995, tops in the nation. With competition to land investment dollars and corporate expansions growing ever tighter, many regions feel a need to separate themselves from the pack.
Reputation is very important.
The perception has to be that you have a great place to do business. One point on which all can agree is that Silicon Valley is way ahead in size, influence and level of success. When you try to think of parallels for such a concentration of talent and insight in one area, it's probably not going too far to compare it to something like Florence during the Renaissance. The following is an admittedly inexact list of Silicon Valley's top four rivals, based on available numbers and interviews with industry leaders. Beginning in the 1970s, technology companies along the semicircular highway west of Boston turned the area's shrinking Rust Belt economy into the East Coast's computer capital.