This was the formula behind America’s information-technology boom in the last half of the twentieth century. Not only did the country produce many more startups per capita than Europe or Japan did, it consistently produced startups that grew to flagship status: the now-defunct Digital Equipment Corp. in the 1950s, Intel and AMD in the 1960s, Microsoft, Apple and Oracle in the ’70s, Cisco Systems and Dell in the ’80s, and Amazon and Google in the ’90s, for example. In addition to such new giants, many other IT startups grew to be sizable niche firms, employing hundreds to thousands of people.
