Stephen Adams

A comparison of the engineering schools at UC Berkeley and Stanford during the 1940s and 1950s shows that having an excellent academic program is necessary but not sufficient to make a university entrepreneurial. Key factors that made Stanford more entrepreneurial than Cal during this period were superior leadership and a focused strategy. The broader institutional context mattered as well. Stanford did not have the same access to state funding as public universities and some private universities. Therefore, in order to gather resources, Stanford was forced to become entrepreneurial first, developing business skills at the same time Cal was developing political skills. Stanford ’s early development of entrepreneurial business skills played a crucial role in the development of Silicon Valley