“Businesses located in places where success is the norm, and innovation is built into the ecology, have a better chance of fixing themselves. Intel almost bit the dust in the mid-1980s, but came back to greater glory. Like Kodak, it faced ruinous Japanese competition. Intel didn’t hesitate. It shed its memory-chip business and bet the ranch on microprocessors. That was a big bet and it was ruthless. Memory-chip factories were shuttered and people were laid off. That was, and is, easier to do in Silicon Valley, where the laid-off can more readily find new jobs, than in a small city like Rochester, whose population is now at 210,000 plus.”
Rich Karlgaard in The Wall Street Journal
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