Wage Inequality in Austin - Different Industries, Different Stories

The environmentalization of urban entrepreneurialism: From technopolis to start-up city

“…George Kozmetsky knew about [entrepreneurship] … While we were out chasing companies, George was putting in place all the support infrastructure for entrepreneurship: the capital area network, a computerized data service for investors and entrepreneurs, the Austin Technology Incubator, [and] the Austin Software Council. (quoted in Echeverri-Carroll and Oden, 2016: 22).…”

“…The most notable was Dell, founded by Michael Dell when he was a student at the UT. In addition, numerous corporate spin-offs or spinouts from early start-ups have emerged, such as Tivoli (Echeverri-Carroll and Oden, 2016), even as Austin has continued to attract investment from larger companies such as Oracle and Apple.…”

“…For instance, in the mid-1980s, in the wake of a recession, the Texas Legislature established the successful Advanced Technology and Research Program (ATRP; Smilor, Gibson, and Kozmetsky, 1989). More recently, Austin’s entrepreneurial success, as Echeverri-Carroll and Oden (2016: 17) explain, “has been mainly tied to the continuous migration of talent, mostly from other cities in Texas and Silicon Valley.” As they note, it is Austin’s capacity and its social, cultural, and institutional infrastructure that support its ability to retain and attract talent, leading the influential Austin businessman Pike Powers (2004) to call Austin the “Human Capital.”…”

“…(interview, October 2015)Former Chamber President Glenn West went further and claimed:George Kozmetsky knew about [entrepreneurship] … While we were out chasing companies, George was putting in place all the support infrastructure for entrepreneurship: the capital area network, a computerized data service for investors and entrepreneurs, the Austin Technology Incubator, [and] the Austin Software Council. (quoted in Echeverri-Carroll and Oden, 2016: 22).Kozmetsky and his colleagues as IC 2 , in fact, came up with the phrase “technology venturing” to define the “collaborative entrepreneurial process for commercializing science and technology through innovative institutional arrangements” (Jones, 2018: 336; Kozmetsky et al., 1985).…”