Lessons from Silicon Valley: Talk by Burton Lee

Silicon Valley often serves today as a model and benchmark how regional and national economies in Europe can be transformed into innovation centres and generate new jobs. Reference is often made to a culture of failure in Silicon Valley as much as to breakthrough innovations, changing industries from scratch, or the role of leading founding personalities, such as Steve Jobs.

Unconventional and previously unspoken

Burton Lee, a much sought-after consultant of European companies, industrial clusters, universities and regions, will look at the lessons to be learned from Silicon Valley which Austrian companies, universities and regions very rarely hear about. He’ll track down previously unspoken, or at least less well-known, facts about the Valley. And he’ll do this from the perspective of an expert from the Stanford School of Engineering who, for more than ten years, has dedicated himself to researching not only European and Californian start-up culture but also their respective traditions and ecosystems in research and innovation.

The talk will be presented by the Styrian Entrepreneurship Platform (ST-E-P), a cooperation between the University of Graz and TU Graz.

About Burton Lee

Based in Silicon Valley, Dr. Burton Lee wears numerous hats that span academia, industry, government, technology, design and policy. As a member of the Stanford Engineering faculty, he lectures on European Entrepreneurship and Innovation, supported by more than a dozen European national and regional government partners over the past eight years. Lee is today considered one of Silicon Valley’s leading experts on the European entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystem, with extensive experience advising European corporations, universities, industry clusters, governments, investment funds, accelerators and techparks; coaching European startups; and developing new approaches to Europe’s innovation challenges. Burton Lee holds a PhD in Mechanical & Electrical Engineering (Stanford), an MBA in Finance (Cornell), and a Bachelors degree in Economics (Brown). He concurrently serves as Managing Director of Innovarium Ventures.